LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Shelf... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



. FOUNT MARTIN. 



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BOSTON : 

PUBLISHED BY H. H. CARTER & CO. 
1892. 



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Copyright, 1892, 
By J. FOUNT MARTIN. 



Electrotyped by J. S. Cushing & Co. ; Boston, 



Eo mi 



IN WHOM CHRIST, THE TRUTH, STANDS HIGHER 

THAN SELF OR SECT, THESE WRITINGS 

ARE FRATERNALLY INSCRIBED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



Who created all things, by Jesus Christ, to the intent 
that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly 
places might be known by the church, the manifold 
wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose which 
ne purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Ephesians hi. 9-1 1. 



INTRODUCTION. 



This book was not made ; it grew. Many years 
ago the seed-thought, viz. : the Why and the What 
of Man's existence, was planted in the soil of the 
writer's mentality, and from it a tree has sprung up, 
the fruitage of which is this series, of papers. 

The thought came, demanding expression, and by 
slow stages it has worked out its own formulation 
through whatever capacities of rational receptiveness, 
literary ability, and spontaneity it found in its agent. 

The latter claims to be regarded in the work in 
nowise, beyond the having been faithful in recording 
the truth as given him. 

The book is sent forth without the slightest anxiety 
as to its reception. Such readers as are prepared for 
its truths it will find. 

Some of the results to which, by intuitive percep- 
tion and logical deduction, the writer has been forced, 
were, to him, as startling as at first glance they may 
prove to the reader. But loyalty to the Truth has 
held him to his conclusions, whatever they might be. 
The thought has not been restrained, diverted, or 
emasculated, but faithfully written. 

The wide range and diversity of subjects discussed 
are unitized by being grouped around the central idea. 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

A brief biographical sketch of the birth and growth 
of the thought of which these writings are the out- 
come may be appropriate and not uninteresting to 
the reader : — 

Twenty-five years ago, I (the writer) went out 
from the Theological Seminary equipped, as I sup- 
posed, for the work of the Gospel Ministry. But I 
soon came to the conclusion that I was very poorly 
prepared either to teach or to lead. My learning 
was mechanical, of the memory only, and not at all 
organically my own in life or thought. My preach- 
ing was of necessity largely parrot-like. I had simply 
imbibed my theology, having received it as true only 
on the ground of external authority. I had not de- 
veloped the capacity, nor had I the time, to think 
for myself. My inquiries had not been directed to 
the answer of the question, "What is Truth?" but 
only, "What have others for me determined to be 
Truth ? " My preaching was wanting in vitality. It 
was not the preaching of Christ, but talks about him. 
I believed the Bible and knew Christ as the Saviour, 
but my theological views were all awry, and my intel- 
lectual convictions had no root in spiritual rationality. 
My perceptions of God and of his dealings with man 
were those of an arbitrary Judge rather than the out- 
working of Infinite Love and Wisdom along lines 
fixed and determined by eternal law. 

I became dissatisfied. Thought was awakened. I 
was impelled to seek the rationale of Christian truth. 
Like the mythic Jason of old, I set out on a voyage 
in quest of the golden fleece. Ere long my mental 






INTRODUCTION. Vll 

bark encountered storms, fogs, and breakers. Au- 
thority having been cast aside, I was left without any 
anchor whatever, and my biblical compass was to 
me comparatively useless. As yet, I had learned to 
see but one side of truth, and that was the outside, 
the sense appearance. I was endeavoring to con- 
struct a theological astronomy with man as the earth- 
center, around which the Divine Sun revolved. The 
result was endless confusion. System after system I 
examined, and like a shuttle-cock was thrown from 
one to another — from Calvinism to Arminianism ; 
from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism ; from Univer- 
salism to Annihilationism, etc., and was impaled on 
the sharp points of the inconsistencies of each and 
all. My hair grew prematurely gray in the agony of 
the mental conflict. I became discouraged, and like 
a drowning man, grasped at straws. 

The craft of Spiritualism came floating by, and I 
took passage. But ere long, my voyage I found tend- 
ing through a region of dense fog, laden with poison- 
ous vapors. 

I next shipped aboard the bark of Ecclesiastical 
Swedenborgianism. Thence for a time my voyage 
was through calm waters and under clear skies. Or, 
to lay aside the figure, I found in Swedenborg's writ- 
ings the foundation of a rational conception of truth 
and for the time being was inexpressibly charmed. 
They afforded the mental pabulum which I, in my 
then stage of development, needed. I greedily de- 
voured his philosophy and paused not till I had 
become acquainted with the writings of other leading 
kindred thinkers. 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

Again, however, dark clouds overcast my mental 
and spiritual skies. The spiritual and moral results 
of my philosophy were not satisfactory. My course 
in that direction tended to remove me from sympa- 
thy with my fellow-man, and imbued me with a 
spirit of cold, complacent pharisaical intellectualism. 
Judged by its fruits, I was compelled to say of my 
new-found thought-solvent, " Thou art weighed in the 
balance and found wanting.'' Despair settled down 
upon me. I could neither cease thinking nor find a 
consistent solid basis for thought. I tried to force 
my mind into business channels. But all in vain. I 
was urged onward by a spirit of investigation that I 
could not successfully resist. 

By this time, however, I had gotten hold of the 
Key which has proved to me the means of opening 
out into the broad highway of eternal truth. That 
Key is the answer to the question, "What are we 
here for ? " " What is the object of our existence ? " 
The answer is stated by St. Paul in the language 
which forms the text for these writings : " God created 
all things, by Jesus Christ, that now unto principalities 
and powers in heavenly places might be known by 
the Church, the manifold wisdom of God according 
to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." 

With this Key in hand, I turned to the volume of 
History. To my joyful surprise, I was for the first 
time led into a clear perception of history as the 
unfolding of a Divine purpose toward a predetermined 
end. Casting my eye down the ages, I saw each 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

period falling into its place in harmonious relation 
with every other as being but the expression of the 
degree or phase of evolution at that point in the 
general movement. I saw that the Divine Incarna- 
tion being the end of our race existence, the birth of 
Jesus Christ was the pivotal point of our race develop- 
ment ; that the ages preceding, with their historical 
experiences, were the preparation for that event ; that 
the ages following were the unfoldment of the race 
under the quickening Spirit flowing out from the 
Divine humanity, and that all looked toward the pre- 
destined goal of a perfected Divine humanity in the 
whole race as symbolically sketched in John's vision 
on the Isle of Patmos and recorded in the Book of 
Revelation. I was thus enabled to determine meas- 
urably the advance already made in our race-evolu- 
tion, the status of our present age, and the signs of 
the times of our day. 

I next turned to the laws of Nature. I saw that if 
the Divine Incarnation of and in the Christ was the 
end of our world-existence, then all nature must be an 
expression of it. Her laws must be symbolical out- 
workings of this central truth. This fact I verified 
by application of the principle to nature. The birth 
and life of Jesus Christ I found to be the antitype of 
the laws of evolution, from the mineral up to the 
spiritual man in the Christ, and the facts of nature to 
be representatives of spiritual truths in relation to this 
great central doctrine. Thus nature became a Divine 
Book, revealing God in all things. 

In the process of these investigations, I had been 



X INTRODUCTION. 

led back from phenomena to Him of whom nature 
speaks and had taken my stand in the Absolute. 
Here my inquiries took on a more philosophical cast. 
The questions : What is God ? What is man ? What 
is the constitution of phenomena ? What are man's 
relations to God and to nature ? next engaged my 
thought. Here, as before, the Divine Man became 
my center and guide. In him I could read the linea- 
ments of God and man, and from him learn man's 
relations to both. 

Suffice to say, that from the Absolute as the great 
center, with my magical Incarnation-Key in hand, I 
have radiated outward along every line of thought 
and investigation and have found this key at every 
step, the open sesame. For myself the long-sought- 
for mental rest has been found. 

The results, I have embodied partly in these writ- 
ings. To every man is given his own work. Herein, 
I feel, lies largely mine. That the hand of an All- 
Wise Providence has guided me in my wearisome 
search, I feel assured. That I have made mistakes 
is to be expected. Only one infallible being has ever 
lived on our earth. One thing I claim, and that is 
that I have given faithfully the truth as it has been 
given to me. The literary features of the work are 
not what I could wish, nor what they might have 
been under other auspices. The writing has been 
done mostly amid very inharmonious surroundings and 
relations, and under the stress of adverse circum- 
stances and mental conditions. 

But such as it is, the work is sent forth. It claims 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

attention as a contribution towards the solution of 
questions which the Church of our age must solve or 
die. For the lack of such solution, atheistic mysti- 
cism on the one hand and agnostic materialism on 
the other, are eating out of the very vitals of the 
Christian system. The superficial clap-trap methods 
to which the Church is descending in the endeavor to 
make headway against the inrushing foe, such as the 
noisy clanging of the Salvation Army and the sensa- 
tional clamor of sentimental revivalism, is an indica- 
tion of the shallowness of present thought and the 
straits to which, for lack of a solid philosophical 
foundation for the truth, we are being pressed. Of 
the reader I make only one request. It is that he 
shall treat himself and this work with fairness by not 
passing upon it a judgment formed from partial or 
limited knowledge of its contents. 

One word as to the diagrams. They are not 
intended as esoteric symbols, but only as map-pictures 
of the thought, serving somewhat the same purpose 
that maps do in Geography. They have been found, 
in popular lectures, very helpful to the hearer, and it 
is hoped that they may prove equally so to the 
reader. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



Letter of Miss Wise to Professor Fontaine, seeking aid in the 
solution of certain problems . . . 3 

II. 

The Professor's answer, outlining a course of investigation. His- 
torical River and Historical Orbit diagrams. Use in the Uni- 
verse, of our race. Necessity of such knowledge. Teaching of 
the Apostle Paul in Ephesians hi. 9, 10, 11. The "Universal 
Key " diagram 8 

III. 

Letter of Miss Wise, introducing certain persons who have become 
interested in the subject of correspondence. Mr. Priest criti- 
cises the Professor's interpretation of the text in Ephesians hi . . . 24 

IV. 

Professor F to Miss Wise, answering Mr. Priest's strictures . . 28 

V. 

Professor F to Miss Wise. Meaning of the term Incarnation. 

Orbit of Creation diagram. Christ the antetype of all creation. 
The Sun positive and the Planets negative. Creation an out- 
birth from God. Law of Correlation. Argument for the exist- 
ence of God. Spencer's Infinite Energy 32 

VI. 

Miss Wise to Professor F . " Why and What Club " organ- 
ized. Original Planetary formation, etc 42 



XIV CONTENTS. 

VII. p AGE 

Professor F to Miss Wise. How light and heat are produced. 

Most distant planets habitable. Chemical elements derived 
from electricity. Organic creation — vegetable, animal, and 
man. Spiritual man. Christ's Immaculate Conception in ac- 
cordance with natural science law 44 

VIII. 

Professor F to Miss Wise. Correspondence between natural 

phenomena and spiritual truth. Man's relation to God repre- 
sented by the relation of the Planets to the Sun. Correspondence 
of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. Individuality never 
lost. Nirvana. The Prodigal Son. 

The three steps from the Sun to the Mineral correspond to the 
three mental planes in man. Physical porosity and mental 
receptiveness. Laws of light and heat. Birth from above an 
universal law. Spiritual correspondences in the body. Unity, 
Duality, and Trinity of God impressed on all creation 56 

IX. 

Miss Wise to Professor F . Various theories of different mem- 
bers of the " Why and What Club " on the subject of the Christ. 
Miss Wise seeks light 65 

X. 

Mrs. Goode to Professor F , outlining the history of her thought 

on the Christ question. Trinitarianism. Unitarianism. Theo- 
sophical notion. Dual constitution of the man Jesus 68 

XL 

Professor F to Mrs. Goode. Constitution of Christ's ego. 

Philosophical principles. Christ the full-orbed, the perfect man, 
hence the perfect expression of God. In the Christ, Divinity 
organized into the natural mind. He the medium for the Incar- 
nation of God in humanity. 

No qualitative difference between the constitution of the ordinary 
man and the man Christ Jesus. Definition of natural law. 






CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

Christ the culmination of creation according to the law of Evo- 
lution. The Christ-man diagram. Resume of the whole subject. 
Christ the Father manifested 75 

XII. 

Mrs. Goode to Professor F . Historical feature of the Christ 

question. Lack of principle underlying and unifying historical 
facts. How was Christ the " First born," and why cannot ordi- 
nary man become equal to him in consciousness of unity with 
God? 95 

XIII. 

Answer of Professor F to Mrs. Goode. He promises a visit 

and sends a lecture on history 98 

XIV. 

Lecture. 

" Lo, I come; in the volume of the Book it is written of me." 
Psalm xl. 7. Why history ought to be interesting and profit- 
able. Why, as written, it has largely failed of its purpose. 
Object of our existence must be known. The key to history 
contained in the text. Divine Incarnation an universal faith. 
God's law compels evil to serve good. Diagram of head. 
Ranges of thought and feeling. Historical descent and ascent. 
Churches of the Book of Revelation. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 
Use subserved by Jews, Romans, etc. Present age. Central 
truth of this age 105 

XV. 

The Professor's arrival. Social meeting of the Club. No back- 
ward step in man's evolution. Evolution, the phenomenal 
manifestation of a subjective involution. Several steps of devel- 
opment. Illustration by a tree. Significance of the period in 
history of the birth of Christ. Talk on Phrenology. The body 
the outbirth of the natural mind, the mind in external manifes- 
tation. Bodily temperaments — their marks and language. Re- 



XVI 



CONTENTS. 



lation of Physiology to Psychology. Health and disease. Judge 
Wise arraigns the Church and is requested to write out his 
thoughts 1 29 



XVI. 

Judge Wise's Essay. 

Discrepancies in the literal statements of the Bible. The six days' 
creation. Light on the fourth day. Two varying accounts of 
creation. All created good. Whence the serpent? Difficulties 
in the account of the Noachian Flood. Bible and natural science 
at variance as to man's history. Doctrine of the Fall. Atone- 
ment. Endless Hell. Logical dilemma. Annihilation. Prob- 
lem of the existence of the devil. Second probation. Professor 
Fontaine's primal question. Comments on the Judge's paper. 
The Judge's answer. 

Dr. Manuel gives the Swedenborgian method of interpretation 
and solution. The letter of Scripture the phenomenal represen- 
tation of the spiritual meaning. Revelation in the nature of 
the case must be spiritual. Literal sense, the mere appearances 
of truth. Mrs. Goode comments on the Doctor's view of hell. 
The Professor being called on, remarks that the subjective 
philosophy affords the light out of the labyrinth. It will work 
a universal cure of human ills 143 



XVII. 

Sermon. 

Is life worth living? Prevalence of unhappiness. The end for 
which man was created. Suffering the necessary result of dis- 
harmony. Why penalty for evil cannot be remitted. Meaning 
of the Divine Incarnation. Man's inherent relations to God. 
Conscious union to God in Christ by faith. The selfhood not 
saved. Erroneous views. The law a schoolmaster to bring to 
Christ. Justification, sanctification, and redemption in Christ. 
The believer panoplied against all evil and suffering. The law 
of love fulfilled in and by the believer in Christ. Summary of 
results of union to Christ. The believer's present inheritance. 



CONTENTS. XV11 

PAGE 

The body included in redemption. Poem. Discussion of cer- 
tain points growing out of the sermon 175 



XVIII. 
Book Review by Professor F . 

Subject: The Man and his Mission. Description of the man 
Jesus Christ. From what man is to be saved. Individual and 
race development without sin. Jesus an illustrative example. 
Regenerative development of our humanity after the race has 
been purged of sin. 

What now hinders? Race hypnotism. Christ the Deliverer. 
Man as spirit, soul, and body. 

The body the reflex of the soul. Death the cessation of conscious- 
ness. Eternal or age-abiding life. Second death. The saving 
and the loss of the soul. Salvation hitherto not extended to the 
body. Why? Resurrection means bodily regeneration. The 
first and second resurrections. The second death. Parable of 
the rich man and Lazarus. Christ's temptations in the wilder- 
ness. Resume of the book. Why the body now grows old, 
and what will be its evolution in the coming age. Outline of 
future investigations ic 



\ 



THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



oXXo 



LETTER OF MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 

My Dear Teacher : I am in trouble. You will 
not so much wonder at this perhaps, for everybody 
in whatsoever condition has his own trials, but I am 
sure you will be surprised at the source of my present 
perplexity. 

I know just what you are thinking now, as those 
kindly eyes look on this statement. " Some inconse- 
quential girlish matter occupies her childish brain in 
the absence of life's more serious concerns ! " 

But let me remind you, my dear Professor, that I 
am no longer a child. You are thinking of me as 
I was in my school-days several years ago. 

Mind, I do not regard myself as very aged yet. 
There is a social law against girls growing any older 
until they get married, but I propose to remain young, 
whether married or single. 

This suggests what I want to write about. I sup- 
pose you take my statement about not growing old as 
a jest. I never was more serious. The fact that we 
can practically realize our true selves in God, and 

3 



4 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

thus largely control the body now, and that the whole 
race will eventually develop to the point where spirit- 
ual thought shall be supreme over all outer condi- 
tions, overcoming even death, — this, with a great 
many other wonderful and blessed things, my eyes 
have been opened to see. 

I have been attending a class in metaphysics taught 
by a Madam Mystik. Her method is peculiar. It 
can scarcely be called teaching. You used to tell us 
that true understanding consists in knowing reasons, 
and that teaching is opening the way to the appre- 
hension of causes. Mrs. M only affirms. She 

just says so and so is so without giving a reason. But 
the results are marvelous. Although her statements 
are what to ordinary apprehension seem the utterances 
of insanity, yet many, mostly women, and I for one, 
see them as verities. The statement of the fact to 
me carries with it and in it its own evidence. Still, 
while I see them as true, I cannot reconcile them 
with other known truths. For instance, I can readily 
accept her teachings that God is the All of Substance, 
Life, and Intelligence in the Universe. I intuitively 
see this, with many other wonderful truths connected 
with it and - dependent upon it. But she further 
teaches that the sense world is a myth. I know that 
there is a truth here and yet a fallacy. I know that 
matter is not what it seems, but I am in a muddle as 
to what it is, what it is for, and how we are related 
to it. 

Mrs. M had a large class, Father among them. 

You know he is inclined to be skeptical as to the 



MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 5 

unseen. He at first annoyed Mrs. M by trouble- 
some questions about reasons, but when he found she 
had none to offer, he gave the matter up ; and while 
he has treated the subject since with outward respect, 
I can see that he does so only through courtesy. 

Now, Professor, I am just longing for somebody 
to explain things so as to render them, to external 
thought, consistent and rational. I know there is a 
profound philosophy underlying all this realm of 
seeming which, when understood, will reveal in logi- 
cal clearness the underlying reality. I don't care 
so much on my own account as for that of certain 
friends in whom I am interested. But I must con- 
fess that while I am not troubled with a shadow of a 
doubt, as to the facts, my own mind would be more 
at rest if I could have the detached truths of the 
system brought into consistent, logical relations. 

Is it not natural, my dear teacher, that I should in 
my present strait turn to you who have in the past 
helped me over so many obstacles in the way of my 
mental progress ? 

Now, if possible, let the additional obligation be 
laid upon me of receiving aid to surmount this wall 
that rises so precipitously before me. 

As I have intimated, women seem to enter into 
this truth more readily than men. You will perhaps 
wonder why I should expect in you an exception to 
the ordinary view of this subject by masculine minds. 
Well, one thing, I remember that in your teaching 
you frequently gave us glimpses of deeper meanings, 
especially in history and philosophy. I have before 



6 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

me a lecture you delivered on the " Signs of the 
Times," in which you indicate a perception of the 
truth along the exact line in which I want light. I 
inclose an extract from it. You say — 

" In the course of our race development, we are 
passing from the stage of sense-perception to that of 
spiritual rationality. Our age is one of the world's 
crises. The fountains of the great deep are breaking 
up, and a deluge is impending. All spiritual thought 
is being stifled by the choke-damp of a naturalistic, 
atheistic agnosticism. Not to ascend above this 
mephitic atmosphere means death. 

"The desideratum of the time is a rational inter- 
pretation of nature's phenomena as related to spirit ; 
a harmonizing of theology with infinite ends of good, 
and a practical exemplification of the power of the 
Son of Man on earth to heal, not only the spiritual, 
but the bodily maladies of humanity. 

"The Goliath of naturalism challenges the David 
of Christianity to deadly combat in vindication of the 
latter's claim to championship in the World's thought. 
The only weapons by which he can be conquered 
must be those wrought out in the forge of a true 
spiritual philosophy. 

" Christianity must arm itself with the helmet of a 
philosophic understanding of our true being and of 
our relations to the Infinite ; with the shield of a cor- 
rect knowledge of the character of the phenomenal 
world, and with the sword of a perception of the 
specific use in the universe of our humanity. In 
other words, we must know the What, the Why, the 



MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. J 

Whence, and the Whither of our race. Herein is the 
key opening the prison doors and releasing captive 
humanity from physical and spiritual thralldom ; from 
disease, eventually from death." 

Now, I can scarcely suppose that you have gone 
back, or have ceased your investigation of this mo- 
mentous theme ; and judging from your former posi- 
tion, I assume that you are still in advance, and hence 
are able to give the explanation we stand so sadly in 
need of. 

I spoke to Papa about you, and he, with an incred- 
ulous smile, said, " The Professor probably knows as 
much about it as anybody else." 

He joins me in a cordial invitation to you to visit 
us. Will you come ? 

Write soon and say, " Yes," to your loving pupil, 

Mary Wise. 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



II. 

ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 

My Dear Friend and Pupil : Your kind letter at 
hand. I most heartily sympathize with you in your 
mental throes. You are not alone in this. Many 
older, perchance not wiser, heads than yours are 
undergoing similar experiences. 

I hope not to disappoint you in your expectations 
of me. I have been a life-long student of what is 
now occupying your attention, and, to my own satis- 
faction at least, have solved the problem, so that 
from my stand-point all is seen in rational light. The 
difficulties you suggest and many more rose up in 
my way, but eventually disappeared under the sol- 
vent power of the true spiritual philosophy. With- 
out this philosophy, I should have occupied the posi- 
tion of your father and most other thinking men on 
this subject. Woman stands less in need of such 
help because she gets at this truth from an interior 
way, for a reason we shall see when we come to 
examine the philosophy of sex in relation to this 
movement. 

Thanks for your kind invitation to visit you. Other 
engagements prevent my accepting at once, but I 
hope to do so ere long. I will, however, take pleas- 
ure in writing you on the subjects of your inquiry. 



ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 9 

In my letters, we shall follow a systematic course. 
First, we shall treat of phenomena, or appearances 
in nature, which symbolize interior causes ; second, 
we shall consider the infinite source and origin of all 
things, and the human ego in its relations to the in- 
finite and to phenomena ; and finally, we shall 
endeavor to show the present status of our race in 
its development toward the end of its existence. 

I may here remark that the chief obstacle to clear- 
ness of thought upon all this subject has arisen from 
a lack of comprehension of man in his interior and 
exterior relations. Our ego or complete selfhood is 
made up of two factors, viz. : being "and existence. 
By the former term, I mean man, as the immediate 
offspring of the Infinite Father and co-eternally exist- 
ing in him ; by the latter, his conscious, time and 
space existence by which he is endowed with self- 
conscious individuality. Without the recognition of 
both these, together with an understanding of their 
relations to each other, there can be no completeness 
of view, but only partial glimpses, in any direction. 
For the most part, external man, including what we 
term material existence, has alone been recognized as 
substantially real. Man has been supposed to be 
spatially separated from God, and nature has been 
assumed to have a subjective basis of existence inde- 
pendent of man. On the other hand, those who 
have penetrated beyond this phenomenal seeming to 
a perception of man's real being in God, have for the 
lack of a philosophical nexus between the interior 
substance and the external shadow, straightway 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE I. 

I. Man's evolution from being in God to perfected existence in 
nature is portrayed in the diagram, as a river which takes its rise 
in the first phenomenal appearance of outraying life as nebula, and 
flows onward to its end in a full developed individual manhood in 
conscious unity with God. 

II. The Key to the understanding of man's evolution is to be 
found in the answer to the questions as to the Why, the What, 
and the Whence of his existence, — why man is, whence he came, 
and what his final destiny. 

III. The several steps and phases of our race-evolution are suffi- 
ciently indicated in the diagram. Full explanations of these will be 
given in other connections. 

IV. The flowing of the river into the Ocean of Infinite Ends, in 
whose placid waters evil is swallowed up, etc., will also be explained 
hereafter. 

V. The fact of there being just seven ages will be found to be 
not arbitrary nor accidental, but symbolic of eternal principles in the 
Infinite One. 

VI. The first Historic Age is an evolution of a conscious religious 
selfhood descending successively from the Spiritual to the lowest sense 
plane; the second Historical period has been an ascent of the race- 
consciousness by influx of life from the glorified Christ. 



PUK 1 




EXPLANATION OF PLATE II. 

I. God as the Infinite Father, Love, becomes formulate in the Son 
(Wisdom, Spiritual Humanity), and thence is embodied or expressed 
as individualities in natural humanity. 

II. History is a process of development or evolution of the race 
from the innocence of infancy to manhood, and thence to Divinehood 
in conscious unity with God. 

III. The Paradisiacal Man had his consciousness in God, reposing 
upon and in the Divine as a babe upon its mother's bosom. Con- 
sciousness was in the devotional range of faculties. 

IV. Lapsing from this consciousness, the race descends upon the 
plane of the Rational faculties, and thence upon the Perceptive plane. 
At the lowest point of sensualization, the race having been prepared 
by its previous experience for that event, the Christ came. That is, 
the Divine manifests itself in the lowest degree of thought and feeling. 

V. From this lowest point of decadence, the race, through the out- 
goings of the Holy Spirit from the risen Christ, begins its ascent back 
toward God-consciousness. 

VI. In this ascending evolution, it has completed one cycle, has 
arisen out of the perceptive, and is passing into the rational degree. 
The distance yet to be traversed is indicated by the broken line. 

VII. The characteristic of our age, therefore, is to be the entering 
into a true spiritual understanding of God and of phenomena, and of 
our relation thereto. We are in the dawn of a true spiritual phi- 
losophy. 

VIII. The Age of Love follows, which is to consume evil by the 
immediate presence and indwelling of God. God is to have his taber- 
nacle with man. 



Pi a re U 




"il*" o E A T I a >!\i 

,** < n ^ u A/ -* 2 - 

* -* Z - « - • ^ 

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Pe>cep'hve^ 



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13 



14 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

denied the latter as having even a representative 
value or existence in any sense whatever. Let it be 
our effort to get at the philosophy of this whole sub- 
ject and harmonize the conflicting elements. 

Nor need we hesitate on account of its profundity. 
All great truths are simple when we understand their 
basic principles. 

I inclose you a diagram (The Historical River, 
Plate I.) which presents to the eye in broad outlines 
the course of thought which I shall ask you to traverse 
with me. Please study it carefully. 

I also inclose another diagram which I term 
" Man's Historical Orbit" (Plate II.). In this, I 
have endeavored to portray the course of the race- 
history from the Paradisiacal man of Genesis in his 
seeming retrogressive development down to the birth 
of Christ, and thence the ascent back toward God, 
through the Divine radiating from the Word made 
Flesh. You will perceive that as marked on the 
chart, the race in its course has, in our day, just 
emerged from the plane of sense perception, and is 
now developing upon the range of the more inte- 
rior degree, which may be termed "The Spiritual 
Rational." We may have need to refer to these 
charts again. For the present, please fix in your 
mind the fundamental features as far as indicated. 

Now let us consider the question as to the meaning 
or end of our existence ; that is, the use in the uni- 
verse which our race is designed to fulfill. 

Of course, a general answer can readily be given, 
viz. : that we might be happy in the knowledge and 



ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 1 5 

love of God ; but this is too general for our present 
purpose. My question looks to the specific use of our 
particular race. The object of all created intelligence 
is, in the language of the catechism, " to glorify God 
and enjoy him forever." What we want to know is, 
our use as distinguished from that of other peoples in 
the universe ; for instance, the inhabitants of Mars, 
Venus, or Jupiter. 

We may assume that all humanities throughout the 
whole realm of existence constitute one grand unity 
in God. The people of each solar system and of each 
planet occupies a place of its own and performs a 
function peculiar to itself, in its relation to the whole 
universe, just as each organ in the individual human 
body occupies a place and performs a definite func- 
tion therein. We may assume further that whatever 
end God designed in the creation of a people will 
inevitably be accomplished. There can be no mar- 
plots in the Creator's works or purposes. Whatever 
his Infinite design in bringing our humanity into 
existence will come to pass. 

Not only so, but our physical world with all its ap- 
pointments ; the peculiar mental and moral constitu- 
tion of our race ; its historical development under the 
antagonistic forces of good and evil ; every fact and 
phenomenon pertaining to our entire existence and 
history, must be essential factors in the working out 
of this end. To assume that anything can fail to sub- 
serve the purpose of its creation, is to postulate that 
a world and the universe may fall short of their 
design. This is to charge God with weakness or 
folly. 



l6 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

But some will say, "What presumption thus to 
attempt to pry into the affairs of the Infinite One ! " 

Not at all ; it is not presumption, but is rather a 
duty for man to learn all that his finite capacities can 
comprehend. 

Again, it may be objected, "Suppose we get an 
answer to the question proposed, Cui bono ? — what is 
the good? how does it bear upon the subject in 
hand?" 

In answer, let us illustrate by a watch. Suppose it 
to be taken apart and a complete description given of 
its various parts — its face, its case, its hands, its 
springs, and all. Now let one who has never seen a 
watch carefully study the description so as to get a 
clear conception of every part. Of what value would 
such a knowledge be without a further understanding 
of the use of all this mechanism as a machine to mark 
off time ? 

So the world of nature and our humanity is a big 
machine. Every part looks for its explication to the 
end for which the whole exists. Not to understand 
that end, is not to comprehend anything about it 
thoroughly. Unless we know what we are here for, 
we can understand very imperfectly our mental and 
moral constitution ; our relation to God and to other 
humanities; our relation to the phenomena of the 
physical world ; the nature of our historical develop- 
ment — whence we came, whither we tend, and why ; 
the origin and use of evil, and so on. Until this ques- 
tion is answered, over every door of knowledge must 
be inscribed " Mystery." 



ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. I 1 / 

As to whether our Heavenly Father has supplied 
us the means of answering it, opinions may differ. 
The a priori assumption would be that he has done 
so. I think the Apostle Paul gives us the clew. 
Please turn to the Epistle to the Ephesians, third 
chapter, ninth, tenth, and eleventh verses. Take 
away the semicolon after the word " things " in the 
ninth verse ; this gives the true sense. The passage 
now reads as follows : "Who (God) created all things 
by Jesus Christ, that now unto the principalities and 
powers in the heavens, might be known by the church, 
the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

Let us analyze this Scripture. The propositions 
are — 

i. God created all things. 

2. He had a definite purpose in this creation. 

3. That purpose was from eternity. 

4. That purpose was a Divine incarnation in our 
humanity. 

5. That purpose was to be accomplished through 
the medium of the Church ; that is, through our 
race gathered together into one grand unitary body, 
of which Christ is the head. 

6. The ulterior object or design was to use this 
body, called the Church, as the means of more fully 
revealing himself to the universe. 

This seems to be plain and conclusive of the matter 
in question. The specific use of our humanity lies in 
its being the medium of a Divine incarnation, in order 
that through it God may more gloriously shine out 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE III. 

I. The Divine Natural Humanity, the Christ, — God organized and 
expressed in ultimates, — is represented by a star and a key, in accord- 
ance with the words of Revelation, " I am the Bright and Morning 
Star. . . . He that hath the Key of David, that openeth and no man 
shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." 

II. The Star rays point to the five great realms of Knowledge; viz. : 
Being, Existence, End or Purpose, Theology, and Sociology. 

III. In the Christ alone is found the Key opening out into all these 
realms of knowledge. From him alone proceeds the light by which 
they can be seen and understood. 



PUteHI 



Being 



|Pl?il0S0jDf\y 

^OaiLSaJtjori. eta. 




19 



20 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

and reveal himself for the good of all other humanities. 
Certainly, use enough and specific enough, one would 
think, to satisfy the most exacting. 

The prime difficulty in the way of the acceptance 
of this thought is its illimitable grandeur. The idea 
of such a destiny awaiting man is overwhelming. 
What ! is our race, the inhabitants of this little speck 
in space, to be organized into a unity with the Infinite 
Creator of all worlds, and to be used by him in 
universal manifestation ? The natural thought rejects 
such a conclusion in derision. 

But the Apostle asserts it. And besides, the theory 
carries with it the evidence of its verity in that being 
placed at the center of vision it elucidates and har- 
monizes all knowledge. Science, philosophy, history, 
theology, ontology, — all take on a meaning of tran- 
scendent grandeur and clearness when considered in 
their subsidiary relations to the great truth of the 
Divine incarnation in our race for universal ends. 

The history of past thought shows that without 
the explication given by this idea as the central truth, 
all is confusion and disharmony. Religion has ever 
been at war with scientific fact and rational thought ; 
science has been studied as men use the dissecting- 
knife, operating upon a body from which all life has 
departed ; Philosophy, with no pole star to guide her, 
has utterly failed of her proper function, viz. : the 
wedding of phenomena to its infinite principle ; and 
history has been a stream having its source in no 
whence, flowing through an indeterminate land of 
nowhere, and emptying into the ocean of no whither. 



ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 21 

But from the heights of the supreme truth that the 
very end of our being — that which is the center and 
life of all truth appertaining to our mundane sphere 
of existence — is the ensouling of the Infinite in our 
humanity as a medium for the outraying of Infinite 
Love and Wisdom to universal worlds, the vast land- 
scape of knowledge at once assumes harmony and 
consistency. 

Pardon my asking your attention to another dia- 
gram (Plate III.). My teacher habit of projecting 
truth in geometrical forms must be my excuse for 
this. I call this chart the " Key of Knowledge." It 
is a star inclosing a key, encircling which are the 
words, " Divine Natural Humanity," the star rays 
pointing toward the five great divisions of knowledge. 

The general idea is, of course, easily seen, viz. : 
that the Divine Natural Humanity in our race, of 
which Jesus the Christ was the first representative, is 
the center from which radiates light on all subjects 
of thought, and whence alone they can be seen com- 
prehensively or clearly, and that this is the Key 
which alone can unlock the door leading into every 
avenue of knowledge. 

These symbols are used in the Bible to designate 
Christ. Balaam saw him rise as the star of Jacob. 
His star appeared to the wise men of the East and 
guided them to his cradle in Bethlehem. In the 
Book of Revelation, he says of himself, " I am the 
Bright and Morning Star," and again, "I am He 
that hath the Key of David ; that openeth and no 
man shutteth, and that shutteth and no man openeth." 



22 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Now, if you will attentively consider the matter, 
you will see that the realm of knowledge is logically 
comprehended under five divisions, viz. : Being, Ex- 
istence, End or Purpose, Theology, and Sociology. 
The first relates to the origin, the principle, the cause, 
and internal constitution of all that is; the second 
deals with external or phenomenal appearances — 
science coming under this head ; the third includes 
all the processes of development, whether of nature 
or of humanity ; the fourth embraces our conscious 
relations to God as manifested in religion, mental 
and physical health, etc. ; while the fifth compre- 
hends the relations of humanity, social, domestic, 
political, etc. 

And still further, you will perceive that in Jesus 
the Christ is found the key opening out into all these 
realms of thought. For instance, he reveals to us in 
himself what we are in the Infinite Father and our 
spiritual relations to the Infinite. He also tears off 
the mask of seeming subjective reality from sense 
appearances and enables us to perceive the true char- 
acter of phenomena with its laws, including our own 
mortal minds and bodies. In the Divine Incarna- 
tion, we get the clew to our historical development. 
Herein, alone, can we get an understanding of what 
our race-experiences mean, and whither our course 
tends. 

Again, he taught and exemplified in himself, man's 
conscious relations to God and to his fellows. The 
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity, 
by him and in him, are, for the only time in history, 



ANSWER OF PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 23 

revealed, and revealed so clearly that the mind open 
to their reception cannot fail to understand. 

I may remark, in closing, that we are just now 
coming to the point in the unfolding of the ages 
when these great truths shall be received in the heart 
and mind of the race and practically applied in the 
amelioration of human ills. Blessed is he who reads 
aright the signs of the times and harmonizes his life 
in accordance therewith. 

Your friend and teacher, 

Fontaine. 



24 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



III. 

LETTER OF MISS WISE. 

My Dear Professor: Many thanks. I cannot tell 
you how glad I was to get your very kind letter. I 
have read it over and over until I can almost repeat 
it verbatim. The immense scope of thought pro- 
jected really makes me dizzy. The charts are admi- 
rable. They picture before my mind's eye the vast 
area of thought in its relations, with a fullness and 
clearness that is to me wonderful. Where in the 
world did you get these ideas ? just out of your own 
head ? If you were here, I would like to ask you a 
great many questions. For instance, I don't under- 
stand what you mean in the historical river chart, by 
the age that comes just before the Adamic period. 
I have always thought that the existence of the race 
commenced with the creation of Adam. Again, who 
was the Adamic race ? Why was there what you call 
"a retrogressive development"? I suppose, how- 
ever, all such questions will be answered as we pro- 
ceed. What delights me most is the interest you 
have aroused in Papa. I showed your letter to a 
number of our friends, among them two preachers, 
Rev. Priest and Rev. True. The former is a stiff, 
staid theological martinet, and a stickler for Church 
authority, to whom a lack of adherence to the very 
letter of the creed is an unpardonable sin, and who 



LETTER OF MISS WISE. 2$ 

has never doubted a word of his catechism since it 
was taught him at his mother's knee. He judges all 
things by just one standard, viz. : " What does our 
creed say is truth?" " What is the teaching of the 
Westminster Confession on the subject? " 

Mr. True is a man of different type. He is broad, 
independent, and fearless. He has convictions and 
the courage of them, and is open to truth, from what- 
ever quarter it may come. Your letter was an inspi- 
ration to him. He is quite enthusiastic about what he 
calls its vast reach of thought. 

Mrs. M is confused. I can see that your predi- 
cating of the phenomena of existence, a Divine mean- 
ing, that is a means to an end, is very repugnant to 
her thought. Your charts are especially distasteful. 
She has been accustomed to utterly abrogate and . 
ignore all existence as non est, and so teaches her 
pupils. In her mode of thinking, wisdom is in the 
ratio of the perfectness of negation as to all that 
relates to outward things or to the natural mind. In 
fact, with her, to get rid of the sense realm is to get 
rid of all evil. 

Mr. Priest criticised your interpretation of the text 
from Paul, Ephesians hi: 10, n. He says that your 
views run counter to the interpretation of all com- 
mentators. The " mystery," he says, of which the 
Apostle here speaks, is not as you make it to be, the 
Divine incarnation of the Christ, and through him, of 
our humanity ; but it was the fact that in the death 
of the Cross, Christ took away the wall of partition 
between the Jews and Gentiles, so that now the Gos- 



26 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

pel could be preached to all. He warned me to be 
careful how I suffered myself to be led off after 
strange doctrines. In a sermon a short time ago, he 
denounced the new thought, by whatever name called, 
as rank infidelity, aided and abetted by long-haired 
masculine cranks. Still he read your letter and 
wanted to know about you. 

His wife is much more liberal, and deprecates her 
husband's hostile attitude. 

I don't know that you are interested in all this talk 
about people, but I am sure that you will be glad 
to know that your old Swedenborgian friend, Dr. 
Manuel, is throwing off the shackles of authority, 
and is seeking the truth without reference to the 
medium through which it is given. In a talk with 
Papa on the subject of your letter, I heard him say 
that to receive anything and confirm it as true because 
somebody said so, rather than on the ground of its 
rationality to the receiver, is mental slavery. But I 
notice, for all that, he frequently refers to his favorite 
author by way of confirmation of what he sees to be 
true. He reminds me of a man leaning on his crutch, 
not quite recovered from his lameness. 

For instance, your idea about the use in the uni- 
verse of our race, he did not at first seem to accept ; 
but after a day or two he came, bringing his friend 
Swedenborg to show that he taught the same thing. 
He read from Swedenborg something about the posi- 
tion of our race in the Grand-man, adapting us to the 
use of manifesting God's wisdom and power to the 
rest of the universe ; and about the Divine Sun, shin- 



LETTER OF MISS WISE. 2>] 

ing more brightly before the eyes of the angels, 
following the ascension of Christ. To him these 
Swedenborgian affirmations placed the matter beyond 
controversy. 

And now, Professor, I will only tax your patience 
to speak of one person more : that is, of my dear 
friend, Mrs. Goode, whom I love almost better than 
I do anybody else. She wants to know you, because 
she is seeking, like myself, to get out of the tangle. 
She is a young widow, not long a resident here. I 
fell in love with her at once. Here is a pen picture 
of her : she is tall and graceful, has blue eyes, auburn 
hair, and fair complexion. She is very cultured, a 
woman who thinks, and must have reason as the basis 
of belief; but yet is not masculine, but femininely 
intuitive as to her method of thought. 

Your pupil, 

Mamie. 



28 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



IV. 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 

My Dear Pupil : Yours just received. You seem 
to have gathered for me quite an audience. Thanks 
for your description of them. To a writer or 
speaker, it is a great advantage to have some ac- 
quaintance with his readers or auditors. I shall, in 
writing, imagine my audience as you have pictured 
them, sitting before me. You casually speak of your 
father as skeptical. Yes, I remember, in the sense 
of the non-acceptance of dogmas. The truth is, how- 
ever, that with the judicial caste and training of your 
father's mind, and his intense sincerity, such skepti- 
cism is a natural consequence. 

It is the result of an honesty that forbids a profes- 
sion of faith where the reason is not convinced. His 
skepticism is not that of denial springing from the 
love of darkness rather than light, nor that of un- 
thinking prejudice whose opinions are only the echo 
of inherited preconceptions, but it is a mere suspen- 
sion of judgment. With such, Tennyson's words are 
true, that there is more faith in honest doubt, than in 
half the creeds. Indeed, faith in creeds, for the most 
part, has no spiritual element in it. It is the same 
characteristic which, when turned in the direction of 
politics, makes one man call himself a Republican, 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 29 

another a Democrat, and each to train with his party. 
It is all only a matter of partisan prejudice with no 
shadow of principle underlying it. 

I feel quite confident that when Judge Wise settles 
himself down to examine the New Truth in the light 
of a true spiritual philosophy, he will drink it all in 
as thirsty ground imbibes rain. But as for your 
friend, Mr. Priest, — well, we will hope for the best 
in his case. One thing is against him ; that is, his 
yoke of ecclesiastical bondage. It is impossible for 
any one thus trammeled to make much advance 
towards the light. 

This letter is intended more as a friendly talk with 
you than as a contribution in our regular line of 
thought; but I will briefly answer Mr. Priest's stric- 
tures on my interpretation of the passage quoted 
from Ephesians. I would first ask you to remember 
that there is no punctuation anywhere in the original 
Greek text of the Scriptures. The pointing of the 
English text is only the expression of the translator's 
opinion as to its meaning. 

The Apostle speaks here of a " great mystery 
which from all ages hath been hid in God." What 
was that mystery ? Was it (as the punctuation of 
the King James' version indicates, and as the Rev. 
Priest thinks) merely that the Gentiles also, and not 
the Jews alone, are God's children ? Wonderful 
mystery, this, to be making such an ado about ! A 
fact to be proclaimed by the Church to principalities 
and powers in the heavens ! — a great consummation 
that formed the eternal purpose of the Creator of all 



30 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

things ! — a transcendent arcanum that for all ages 
had been hid in God, but now was to be revealed to 
an astonished Universe ! 

What is it, we may ask, O thou great Apostle of 
the Gentiles ! What is this wondrous revealment 
that moves your great heart so profoundly ? " Hear 
O heavens ! give ear, O earth ! " This is the great 
mystery, viz. : that the -insignificant Jewish nation do 
not wholly monopolize the regards of the Infinite 
Father ! How any rational mind can so belittle the 
Apostle's meaning, is the mystery engaging my 
present thought. 

In the first chapter of this Epistle, he speaks of a 
mystery which he there explains to be the summing 
up of all things in Christ; "the things in the heavens 
and the things on the earth." In Colossians, also, he 
presents Christ as " the image of the invisible God ; 
the Firstborn of all creation ; for whom were all 
things created in the heavens and upon the earth, 
things visible and invisible, whether thrones, domin- 
ions, principalities, or powers ; all things have been 
created through him and unto him.' , ..." It was 
the good pleasure of God, through him, to reconcile 
all things to himself . . . whereof I was made a min- 
ister according to the dispensation of God, which was 
from me to you-ward to fulfill the word of God, even 
the mystery which hath been hid in God from all 
generations." 

All this perfectly accords with the text as I have 
given it. " God created all things by Jesus Christ, 
in order that now unto principalities and powers in 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 3 1 

the heavens, might be known by the church the 
manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
Thus rendered, we have the sublimest mystery that 
has ever been revealed to humanity, whether in this 
world or in any other. One that might inspire the 
enthusiasm, not only of a Paul, but of the loftiest of 
the heavenly hierarchy. 

Peace be with you. Your friend, 

Fontaine. 



32 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 






V. 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 

My Dear Pupil : I assume that you accept as a 
truth my statement that the prime end of the exist- 
ence of our humanity is a Divine Incarnation therein, 
in order to ulterior, universal uses. 

By Divine Incarnation, I mean, comprehensively, 
our race's coming to consciousness of Divine Sonship 
in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ I understand to 
be God's embodiment in time and space manifesta- 
tion, whereby all self-conscious individualities can 
enter into unity with the Divine One and in him 
with one another. Jesus Christ was the "Word 
made Flesh"; that is, he organized the Divine into 
the most external degree of bodily consciousness. 
All our humanity is to do the same in him. He is 
the forerunner, the exemplar, the firstborn, the repre- 
sentative of our race. He stands as the head, to 
which the rest of humanity, constituting the various 
members of the grand unitary body, are consciously 
to be joined, each in his own place, to fulfill his own 
specific function. And so all are to be unified in 
Him and " perfected in one." 

This regenerate state of our whole humanity, this 
consciousness of oneness with the Father, and of uni- 
tary race-life in and through the common Head, is the 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 33 

great and blessed consummation towards which the 
race-development has ever been tending. 

We cannot too often repeat that this truth is the 
mountain top from which the universal landscape of 
knowledge must be viewed in order to comprehen- 
siveness or clearness of view. 

In connection with this truth, I wish you to fix in 
your mind the further basic postulate that all phe- 
nomena are the symbolic expression of spirit — are 
the effect of spirit as the cause — are spirit exfigured 
or externalized. Please accept this as a working 
hypothesis to be philosophically proved hereafter. 

Now assuming these two postulates as premises, 
viz. : the end for which our creation exists, and the 
constitution of phenomena as we have presented 
it, what follows ? This : The whole of nature's 
ongoings, the whole, of physical creation, with its 
laws and forces, must symbolize the Divine Hu- 
manity. To the end that we may more clearly real- 
ize this fact, I will ask you to accompany me in a 
brief journey around the circle of creation. You will 
understand that we are dealing with the scientific 
aspect of things, not the philosophical — with appear- 
ances, not fundamental realities. These facts of 
nature are correspondences of spirit. Science has to 
do with the examining and classifying of nature's 
phenomena as facts. It is the province of philoso- 
phy to explicate the origin and constitution of these 
appearances in their relation to infinite Principle 
underlying them. What we propose to do now, is to 
take a bird's-eye view of creation or the realm of 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE IV. 

I. The Divine Sun, as Love and Purpose, becomes formulate in the 
second degree of the Divine as Wisdom and Cause, and these respec- 
tively become, in the third degree, power and effect, of which the Nat- 
ural Sun is the first expression in nature. 

II. The Natural Sun is thus a great positive body, constantly 
replenished from the Infinite Fountain. 

III. From the Natural Sun as the inmost source of nature's forces 
a stream goes outward and becomes expressed successively in the vari- 
ous forms of phenomena; first as light and heat, second as magnetism 
or electricity, third as the chemical elements or atoms, and lastly as 
the solid substances of the globe. The law by which these changes 
from one form to another are effected is termed the " correlation of 
forces." 

IV. The mineral becomes the basis for organic life, which ascends 
through the successive gradations of vegetable, mineral, human, cul- 
minating in the Divine human in the Christ. 

34 




' 5> I 



^^4 



'ActtvU«j 






w \, a ^ 




35 



36 the earth's use in the universe. 

existence, that we may note its correspondential rela- 
tions to Spirit or Being, of which all nature's phe- 
nomena are the outworking towards the end indicated 
by the central unitizing truth under consideration. 

Again let us have recourse to diagram. (Plate 
IV.) The inclosed figure I call the " Orbit of Crea- 
tion.'' Please look on while I explain. 

The descending arrows at the left represent inor- 
ganic nature as a series descending from the Divine 
Fount of causation, finally resting in the mineral. 

On the right is the organic world ascending in 
corresponding successive steps from the mineral as a 
basis, having for its climax the Divine Humanity in 
the Christ. 

Christ is thus seen to be the antetype and culmina- 
tion of both organic and inorganic creation. 

God is portrayed as a Trinity of Love, Wisdom, 
and Power; as Life, Truth, and Organic Expression, 
etc. The first or inmost of the Divine is Deity form- 
less and unmanif est ; the second is the Divine One 
in form ; the third is the Divine in expression. 

From the first, through the second, the third exists. 
The second degree of the Divine is the " Logos " or 
" Word " of the Scriptures. " In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God. All things were made by him ; and 
without him was not anything made that was made. 
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
Through the Logos, as indicated by the diagram, 
proceeds all creation. The first expression in nature 
of the creative efflux was and is the natural suns. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 37 

These are not incandescent bodies, as has been sup- 
posed, but only great reservoirs of force. The sun's 
forces manifest themselves as light and heat, not 
upon the body of the sun, but upon the planets only. 
Light and heat in turn become magnetism or elec- 
tricity. This again is transformed into the chemical 
elements which by their union form the solid matters 
of the globe. Thus the things that appear came not 
from nothing. " Ex nihilo, nihil fit," the old Latin 
aphorism, is true. Nothing from nothing comes. 
But all creation is an outflowing and manifold ex- 
pression, upon different planes, of the Divine Sub- 
stance. Could we imagine this efflux for one moment 
to cease, all would be naught. God speaks, and it is 
done. There is not nor can be any power, or life, or 
being in the universe but God. In him and from 
him and of him are-all things. As the Revised Ver- 
sion gives John i.3, " All that hath been made is life 
in him, and the life is the light of men." 

The laws by which the forces from the natural sun 
down to the mineral are transformed into other kinds 
of energy is called " correlation." It is coming to 
be an axiom of science that there is but one force in 
the universe, and no force can be lost. There may 
be and is a constant transformation of forces from 
one form to another, — for example, electricity into 
light and heat, or vice versa, — but there is no dissi- 
pation of the amount of energy. This persistence in 
amount is called the " conservation of forces." 

The Divine Substance, by a law at least similar 
to the law of correlation, is ultimated in nature first 



38 the earth's use in the universe. 

as the natural suns, the forces of which by transfor- 
mation become in succession the various forms down 
to, and finally the mineral itself. Thus, every form 
of organic force or substance is only an expression of 
the original or primal Divine Energy. We speak 
of the solid globe. It is but the aggregation of 
points of force (spiritual, shall we call them ?) which 
uncombined are inappreciable to the senses. Separate 
the matters of our earth into their sixty or seventy 
chemical elements, and to sense perception there 
would be no matter here. 

Before passing to the explanation of the other 
side of the diagram, I will call your attention to what 
to my mind is a very striking argument for the exist- 
ence of God as Intelligence and Love, as distin- 
guished from an unthinking and unfeeling force. 
Let us take position upon our globe and ask whence 
it is. It is an effect, and therefore must have a 
cause ; for in the contemplation of any effect what- 
ever, the logical faculty persistently and of necessity 
requires the cause. The direct source of the mat- 
ters of the earth, we say, are the chemical elements. 
Whence are they ? The answer is, that by the law of 
correlation they came from electricity, that from light 
and heat, and these from the sun. So far, all is plain. 
It is manifest that light and heat came from the sun ; 
that these are transformed constantly into electricity 
or magnetism, which as great river currents flow 
toward the poles, deflecting the magnetic needle, 
accumulating as reservoirs at the poles, and flashing 
up in the phenomena of the northern lights. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 39 

It would thus seem that Nature has established her 
workshops at the poles, where she fashions her electric 
forces into the form of the chemical elements, — oxy- 
gen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc., — by which repairs are 
made and wastes renewed. These elements are 
borne back on the atmospheric tides, and are in 
various ways combined. This may be done by the 
electric spark passing through them as we sometimes 
see in thunder storms. In such cases, oxygen and 
hydrogen are formed into vapor and suddenly precipi- 
tated as water. Or again, the chemical elements may 
be taken up into vegetable or animal structures. In 
these, and probably other ways, matters are continu- 
ally being added to the earth's mass. 

But the question presses, whence the sun ? It did 
not come by correlation from any force in nature ; for 
itself is the primal force of nature. It is the inner 
boundary of nature, or perhaps we should say the 
central source. It is the mother-womb out of which 
all nature's forces issue and have their existence. 

Take away the sun, and all life and power upon 
the planets, or, as the expression is, " under the sun," 
would be snuffed out like a candle. 

Then whence the sun ? There can be but one 
answer. That is, it proceeds from a source supra- 
natural. We may, with Herbert Spencer, call that 
source the " Infinite Energy," or what we will; it 
must be assumed to exist. 

Here we rest. Some have illogically sought to go 
further, asking the question, whence this Infinite 
Energy ? They forget that the Infinite cannot be an 



40 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

effect, and cannot therefore have a cause. The logi- 
cal faculty pushes us steadily back into the lap of the 
Infinite — that is, into that which is life itself and 
power itself, and which, therefore, has no cause other 
than itself. 

Are we not thus led by necessity through nature 
up to nature's God ? Mr. Spencer, in the last analy- 
sis, rests all phenomena upon the bosom of Infinite 
Energy ; but, as I think, very illogically concludes 
that we can know nothing of this Infinite Energy. 
He assumes that we can predicate nothing of it what- 
ever as to personal qualities, and hence calls himself 
an agnostic. 

Now, I am not at all anxious about nature's teach- 
ing us directly of God. Knowledge of God comes to 
those who are in any degree spiritually developed, 
through faculties higher than sense. 

Man may have direct apprehension of God as posi- 
tive and reliable as that of the sense perception of any 
natural object. In fact, all satisfying knowledge must 
come through this superior source. But I am sur- 
prised at Mr. Spencer's assumption that we can know 
nothing of God's character from his works. Is not a 
cause known by its effects ? Does not the effect 
bear the lineaments of its cause ? Can the effect be 
superior to the cause, or other than a more or less 
imperfect expression of its cause ? 

Now is not man one of the effects of Mr. Spencer's 
Infinite Energy ? No matter by what processes, what 
series of changes or progressions he came to be what 
he is, he is undoubtedly the effect of that prime origin 
of the all of phenomena. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 41 

But man has intelligence, affection, and will. 
Then is his Creator unintelligent and without love or 
will, a mere force ? Must not he contain within 
himself the sum of all personalities ? 

There is no point raised as to Divine limitations, 
by bodily form or shape. The very term Infinite 
excludes this thought. 

Our contention is only that Deity contains within 
himself as Infinite Principle all those elements which, 
when individualized as they are in man, appear as 
personalities. 

We must assume that the qualities of personality, 
which we find in his creatures, shall proceed from 
corresponding Infinite Principle in their source ; that 
the attributes which man possesses finitely must be 
in his Creator infinitely. 

We will take up the rest of the diagram in the 
next letter. Do not be impatient. Let us be sure to 
master each point as we proceed. Sometimes haste 
is made by going slowly. 

Your teacher, 



42 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



VI. 

MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 

My Dear Teacher : How shall I ever suffi- 
ciently thank you for your letters ! I must confess 
that I cannot grasp fully all your ideas. The fact is, 
I cannot accustom myself to the giddy height from 
which you propose to view things. But I shall do 
my best to stand there with you and take in the 
topography of the country as you point it out. Last 
evening, the little band of folks of whom I wrote you, 
were assembled to read your letters, and at the sug- 
gestion of Mr. True we organized a literary circle, 
calling it "The Why and What Club," of which he 
was appointed chairman, and I secretary and stenog- 
rapher. It is really diverting to see how the differ- 
ent members are affected by your statements. Mr. 
Priest frowned at your explanation of the text from 
Ephesians, and immediately betook himself to his 
Bible. Mr. True was so delighted that he encored 
you. Mrs. M . looks disgusted. Father exam- 
ined very attentively your diagram. I can see that 
he is thinking deeply. He said nothing in the club, 
but afterwards, to Mamma and me, he remarked that 
he did not see any ground for your assumption that 
the chemical elements are derived by the law of cor- 
relation from electricity. He said also that the idea 
that the sun is not an incandescent body is untenable. 



MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 43 

Of course, I am not scientist enough to have any 
opinion on the subject. I did not know that any one 
ever thought of doubting the common opinion that 
the sun is a great ball of fire, and that light and heat 
are radiated from it as from any burning body. Nor 
did I get your idea as to how light and heat are 
produced. I want also to ask you about how, on 
your theory, the earth was produced. Your position, 
as I understand it, is that there is a complete and 
regular chain of forces reaching from the Infinite 
Fountain of causation down to the earth ; that the 
prime force, by successive transformations, finally 
assumes the mineral form, and that there are con- 
stantly being added new materials to the earth's 
mass. 

Now my inquiry relates to the original formation 
of the planet. How about that ? 

You will understand that it is not a doubting spirit 
that prompts these questions. I ask because I want 
to get your thought. 

Besides, though he did not directly say so, I can 
see that Papa would like to have you express yourself 
more fully on these points. 

Your pupil, 

Mamie. 

P.S. — There is a wonderful secret between Mr. 
True and Mrs. Goode, shared only by myself. To- 
day, it was revealed to them and to me, at the same 
time. Sometime I hope to have the privilege of 
telling you, to see what you think of it. To me, it is 
marvelous. 



44 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



VII. 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 

My Dear Mamie : I am not surprised at the con- 
tents of your letter received to-day. That you should 
not be able at once to adjust your mental glasses to 
take in with clearness the vast sweep of creation is 
no more than you should expect. But you are too 
well poised and too much accustomed to mastering 
difficulties to allow any discouragement on this account. 
I am glad to have you ask questions when you do 
not understand, and shall always promptly answer to 
the best of my ability. We will first address our- 
selves to the question as to the sun, and how light is 
produced. 

The scientific facts with reference to light and 
heat, gravitation, etc., viewed through the lens of 
spiritual philosophy, lead me to the inevitable con- 
clusion that the sun is a great positive body with its 
negative planets revolving around it. 

Two bodies in opposite electrical conditions attract 
each other, and vice versa. The sun, therefore, 
attracts the planets around himself. But in the ratio 
of their approach toward him, they absorb his posi- 
tive forces and so become assimilated to his electrical 
conditions and are repelled from him. Receding, 
they again become negative and are again propor- 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 45 

tionately attracted. Thus they are held in their 
elliptical orbits, alternately approaching toward and 
receding from the mother orb, never being able to 
fall into her arms nor to break away from her 
authority. 

This fact of the opposite electrical conditions of 
the earth and sun also accounts for the diurnal revo- 
lutions of the planets, causing day and night. The 
side next the sun, receiving his direct rays, becomes 
positive as compared with the side turned away from 
him. Hence there is greater attraction for one side 
than for the other. That next the sun tends compar- 
atively to push away from him, while the opposite 
side tends to approach him, and so betwixt the oppo- 
site movements the planet is made to revolve upon 
its axis. 

Light and heat are the result of the union or 
co-action of the positive and negative forces of the 
planets and that of the sun, within the planetary 
atmospheres. In the space outside the limits of 
these atmospheres there is neither heat nor light, but 
here absolute cold and darkness reign. 

A knowledge of the fact that heat and light arise 
from the electrical conditions of the planets in rela- 
tion to their primaries enables us to understand how 
the distant planets can be habitable. That they are 
inhabited, there can be no question. But some of 
them are so distant from the sun that assuming them 
to derive heat and light by simple radiation, they 
could not receive a moiety of what would be neces- 
sary to sustain the life of human beings constituted 



46 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

as organic life is constituted upon this planet. Seen 
from them, the sun would appear only as a bright 
star. They would be in a state of iciness and death. 
Assuming, however, that a planet's negativity or 
porosity, — that is, its capacity to absorb the sun's 
forces, — increases with its distance, it follows that 
equal surfaces will receive the same amount of heat 
and light, whatever be their relative distances. 

And as a matter of fact, approximately, the prod- 
ucts of the densities of the planets, into their masses, 
do vary in the ratio of their distances. Let us take 
Jupiter, for example. His mass multiplied into his 
density is as many times greater than the product 
of the earth's mass into its density, as his distance 
from the sun is greater than that of our planet. 

We come now to Judge Wise's criticism, viz. : that 
the transformation of electricity into the form of force 
called chemical elements is an unwarranted assump- 
tion. 

I answer, first, the fact that the chain is complete 
in every other link from the Divine down to the 
mineral, affords a strong presumption that the link 
here is not wanting. 

Second, we have seen that there is but one force 
in the universe, every variety in nature being but a 
transformation from some other. 

The so-called chemical elements are only a variety 
of force. Do they constitute an exception to the 
general law ? If they do not constitute an exception, 
but are like the rest derived from some other force, 
the question arises, From what do they come ? In 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 47 

the descent from the sun to the earth, electricity 
is the form just above the chemical elements. Is not 
the presumption very strong that the latter is derived 
from the former by the law of correlation ? Is it 
not so strong, indeed, as to throw the burden of dis- 
proof upon the objector's shoulders ? 

Third, while it is true that by direct experimenta- 
tion this transformation has not been demonstrated, 
yet there are various phenomena in nature tending 
to substantiate the hypothesis. There is certainly a 
constant renewal of certain chemical elements in the 
laboratory of nature, by some means. If not from 
electricity, as we have indicated, then whence and 
how? 

I quote from Johnson's Encyclopedia : " Light 
may be employed to produce chemical combination 
or decomposition, as we see in photography ; it may 
also, by the same means, be made to produce elec- 
tric currents and consequent motion of the needle. 
Chemical action in a voltaic battery can be made to 
produce motion, heat, light, electricity, electrical at- 
tractions, and magnetism, and to overcome other 
chemical affinity." 

" We can know matter only by the force it exerts ; 
therefore, the supposition of mere geometric points 
capable of exerting force (technically called centres 
of force) will as satisfactorily account for all ob- 
served phenomena as any other idea of the ultimate 
nature of matter. Matter is simply anything that 
can affect the senses, or can exert or be acted upon 
by force," 



48 the earth's use in the universe. 

The determination of the essential constitution of 
matter belongs not to the domain of physics, but to 
that of metaphysics. My object in quoting these 
passages is to show how by the law of correlation all 
forces are transmutable, and further to show that 
matter in its last analysis is reducible to " geometric 
centres of force." Granting these two postulates, 
viz. : that all forms of force are but transmutations 
from some other, and all from one primal persistent 
energy ; and that the solid matters of the earth are 
but aggregations of geometric centres of force, it fol- 
lows of course that the chemical atoms together with 
the mineral substances (the results of the combina- 
tion of the atoms) are only a form of force derived 
from some other form, as is true of electricity, light, 
and heat, etc. 

Again, you will readily perceive how, as I have 
already indicated, the assumption that matter is 
force, and that all force is a transmutation from some 
other form, leads us logically and necessarily step by 
step till we rest in Mr. Spencer's Infinite Energy. 
Now, if we can establish by reasoning from effect to 
cause that man being a person, this Infinite Energy 
can be no other than Infinite Love, Wisdom, and 
Power, you will see that the inevitable logical con- 
clusion is that of a Supreme Intelligence and Good- 
ness as the all of Substance, Power, Life, Intelligence, 
Reality in the universe. Absolutely, God is the 
All. This great truth has ever been dimly seen by 
profound thinkers. But the materialistic notions 
that have heretofore prevailed, such as that matter is 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 49 

a substance other than force or spirit, has caused rev- 
erent souls to shrink back from the acceptance of the 
truth of the allness of God. You can see that assum- 
ing matter to be substance in the ordinary sense and 
assuming that God is the all, lands us in the mire of 
making God and matter to be one and the same in 
essence. All this will come up again ; I only refer 
to it in passing. 

Your cosmological question will come up when we 
reach the philosophy of phenomena. 

I will now ask your attention to organic creation. 
You will notice in the chart that the vegetable, ani- 
mal, man, and the Divine man constitute a regular 
ascending series in the order named, the Divine 
Humanity, or the Christ, connecting all the series 
below with the Infinite. 

You will remember Paul's statement that the end 
of our humanity is a Divine incarnation. Here we 
have this idea set forth in creation as a scientific 
fact. 

Let us take our position back in the ages, beyond 
the time when there existed any organic life, vege- 
table or animal, upon the planet. Let us suppose an 
angel looking out upon the scene. He would be- 
hold a great ball of mud swinging and wheeling 
through space around the sun, and would ask very 
pertinently, " What is all this for ? What use is this 
intended to subserve ? It must, of course, have ref- 
erence to the sustaining of organic life." Presently 
the scene changes. Vegetation clothes the earth's 
surface. He would now ask, " What next ? This 



50 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

vegetation must have reference to a higher form of 
organic existence as its end and use." 

Ere long, animals appear. Fishes swim in the 
seas ; beasts roam the forests, and birds fly in the 
air. The query would still arise, " What object has 
Infinite Wisdom in this display of power ? In itself 
it is not a worthy end." 

Finally man steps upon the arena — an animal 
endowed with rationality, capable of indefinite mental 
expansion and development. " Now," says our angel, 
"at last, here is a worthy end of the creative influx." 

But behold, as he looks, this rational animal grows 
to maturity, frets a brief day upon the stage of life 
and passes away. About all there is of his transient 
existence on earth is the kindling of aspirations which 
he has neither the time nor the ability, in life's short 
span, to realize. He is a creature of infinite possibili- 
ties, but of infinitesimal actualities. So far as his 
experience in this short life goes, all is but a mockery. 
If this be all, it were better for him not to be. If 
this be the object and end of this world's creation, 
it would seem only an infinite abortion. An exten- 
sion of being for man beyond this life and an eleva- 
tion above mere rational animalhood are, therefore, 
an absolute necessity as a justification of man's ex- 
istence at all. Such, we may suppose, would be the 
meditations of our angelic visitant. 

But as he continues to look, still another type of 
being emerges, heralded by angelic messengers. 
While on the one side he is man, on the other side 
he appears as Divine. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 5 1 

Our observer sees this being gradually growing 
up into conscious unity with God. All limitations 
drop away from him. Time and space to him become 
naught. The forces of nature are his servitors. All 
powers in heaven and in earth are at his command. 
His humanity assumes the form of organized divin- 
ity. And the greatest marvel of all is that, at his 
touch, the rest of humanity become transformed. He, 
as a great magnet, draws the race to him, and all 
who come within his sphere take on his polarity. 
Their consciousness becomes transferred from the 
external to the internal, in the realization of sonship 
in God, like unto him, their Prototype. Our ob- 
server is supposed to continue his scrutiny until he 
beholds all earth's race gathered into one grand or- 
ganic, unitary life with and in their head ; and marvel 
of marvels, a flood of Divine light fills this regen- 
erate humanity, radiating through it to all the peo- 
ples and races of the universe, fulfilling the words of 
the apocalyptic seer, " And he showed me the holy 
city, Jerusalem, coming dow r n out of heaven from 
God, having the glory of God ; her light was like 
unto a stone most precious — and I saw no temple 
therein ; for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the 
lamb are the temple thereof — and I heard a great 
voice out of the throne saying, behold the tabernacle 
of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them." 

Our angel now no longer asks wherefore ? but 
bows his head and worships. 

Thus following the chain of organic creation, from 
the lowest to the highest, we find the Apostle's words 



52 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

fulfilled in spiritualized man as the object of it all. 
Christ, then, as a scientific phenomenon is the crown 
of creation. 

We shall also find in him the antetype or prime 
model of natural organisms as to the manner of his 
coming into existence. Going back to the period of 
the first appearance of vegetation upon the earth, the 
question arises, whence it came. The mineral could 
not produce it. There can be evolved out of any- 
thing only that which is involved in it. But there is 
only one law in the mineral, viz. : chemical affinity. 
By this law the atoms unite in certain definite pro- 
portions, producing always the same result ; that is, 
the mineral substance. Water, for instance, is com- 
pounded of two gases, viz. : oxygen and hydrogen. 
By analysis, these are eliminated ; by synthesis, water 
is again produced ; and so on forever. In the same 
way, other substances may be separated into their 
constituent atoms, and again by the law of affinity 
recombined, thus reconstituting the same substance, 
but never anything else. To assume any other force 
or outcome to the mineral, is, by science, utterly 
unwarrantable. 

Vegetation could not originally have sprung from 
the mineral by any law or force inherent in the latter. 
How did it originate ? Granting the first individuals 
of each species, then by natural seed-production, it 
would be perpetuated. But how get the first indi- 
viduals is the question. There is but one conceivable 
hypothesis, viz. : through the agency of a superior 
force. Whence that force ? There is but one an- 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 53 

swer, viz. : Herbert Spencer's Infinite Energy, called 
by unscientific, unagnostic people, God. The inflow- 
ing Divine Energy impregnated the mineral with the 
psychic element of the vegetable, which germinated, 
took to itself a body, and by that means phenomenally 
appeared in nature. Then, by the law of vegetable 
reproduction, it went on begetting its like. 

What is true of the vegetable is also true of the 
original animal forms. The vegetable did not out- 
flower into animal life any more than the mineral 
could evolve the vegetable, and for the same reason, 
viz. : the higher is not involved in the lower. Then, 
whence came the original animal ? The answer is 
that from the realm of life above it, the animal germ 
was inseminated into the lower organic form, and 
thence taking a body it became a living creature and 
went on producing its like. 

In the same way, the primal human soul (or souls), 
descending from the Infinite Father, assumed a body 
from the matters provided by the lower organic forms 
and stepped upon the plane of creation as man. 

Did the process stop here ? We have already seen 
that it did not. 

Just as the mineral had formed the matrix for the 
vegetable, the vegetable for the animal, and the 
animal for man, the lower in each case becoming 
the mother of the next higher form of which God was 
the Father, so man now becomes the womb for giving 
birth to a still higher, a Divine type of being, of whom 
not man, but, as in all creation below, God is the 
Father. (See all this marked by the arrows in the 



54 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

diagram.) Thus it happens that this astounding fact 
predicted by seers hundreds of years before the occur- 
rence, and whose seeming unscientific nature has 
been the butt of skeptical sneers as a lusus-naturae — 
an event outside the course of natural law — has 
turned out to be in perfect accord with the most 
advanced scientific thought. 

The fundamental idea of the development theory 
of Darwin is that there is a regular chain from the 
lowest to the highest of organic forms, each species 
constituting the basis for the next. The truth illus- 
trated by the birth of Christ that the vis-a-tergo> the 
power from behind, propelling the advance onward, 
is of God, supplies a missing link in the Darwinian 
theory. It provides the factor that makes that theory 
tenable. For, as we have seen, the lower has not the 
power in itself to produce or grow into the higher. 
The birth of Christ then becomes the crowning act of 
the scientific law of development. 

I will now refer to only one more law by which the 
Christ is in scientific analogy with nature. I mean 
the law of reproduction of species. As the vegetable 
and animal and man possess the power to beget off- 
spring, so the Christ as a link in nature's chain must 
also possess that power. Does he ? Who are his 
children ? Each soul of man receiving him becomes 
a matrix for the insemination of a germ from the 
Divine Humanity. This germinates and grows to 
the stature of a Divine manhood, thus exemplifying 
Christ's teaching, "Ye must be born from above." 
So the shell of the rational animal man is put off and 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. £5 

the new man put on. Thus the Christ type of man 
is generated, and, so to speak, the race perpetuated. 
Recapitulating : lower creation was in order to man ; 
man was in order to the Christ-man ; Christ is the 
crown and antitype of all below him, and is himself 
as the head of our God-incarnated humanity, in order 
to the manifestation of God to the universe. 

And so, scientifically, the Apostle's language is true 
that " God created all things by Jesus Christ, that 
now unto principalities and powers in the heavens, 
might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom 
of God, according to the eternal purpose which he 
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

As ever yours, 



$6 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



VIII. 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 

My Dear Pupil : A heavy storm of rain has kept 
me within doors to-day. My thoughts revert to the 
" Why and the What Club," and naturally trickle out 
at the point of my pen. 

Thus I find myself writing to you again without 
waiting for an answer to my last. The subject next 
in order is the noting of some of the correspondences 
between natural phenomena and spiritual truth. 
When we come to study the philosophy of creation, 
we shall learn how it is that just as the natural body 
is the exfigurement of the real man, so all nature is 
an effect and expression of spirit, as its cause and 
antetype. For the present we assume that it is so, 
and shall proceed to point out a few of these analo- 
gies. 

1. The most general, and one of the most obvious 
correspondences, is that the planets stand in the same 
relation to the sun that man does toward God. 

The truth that man has his being in God is em- 
blemized in the natural fact that the earths of the 
universe as to substance and forces have their being 
in the sun. 

2. The attraction of the planets toward the sun, 
and their repulsion from him on too near approach — 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 57 

thus their never being able to sink into his bosom, 
nor to break away from his control, corresponds to 
man's conscious life experiences in his relation to his 
Infinite Source. 

Every individual and each humanity as a whole 
has a movement which is the resultant of a centrip- 
etal and a centrifugal force, the one drawing God- 
ward, the other propelling outward. Elsewhere, I 
have referred to these two elements as being and 
existence. Man has co-eternally with God had being 
with and in him. There never was nor could be a 
time when man in this sense was not. Accept this 
now as true. The proof will come further on. 

Accept, on the same condition, also, the statement 
that existence is merely the coming to have, in a 
seeming matter world with a subjective basis other 
than human spirit, an apparently self -generated life 
other than God, together with a spatial separation 
from him and from other individuals of the race. 
Such consciousness in a sense world constitutes 
individuality. 

Try, however hard, man cannot give up his self- 
conscious existence. From the dream that he can 
do so, has resulted the Buddhistical myth of Nirvana. 

Nor, again, can any one so break away from God 
as to permanently estrange his conscious life from 
the ground of his being. Here, the mistaking of a 
superficial and temporary state for a radical and 
eternal truth has evolved a direful falsity, viz. : that 
of an endless hell. The truth is, each man and each 
race, under the counteracting forces that make up the 



5 8 the earth's use in the universe. 

ego, must and will eventually find their true equi- 
libriated place, being able neither permanently to 
ignore their infinite being, nor to abrogate their finite 
existence. In external thought, the truth on the one 
side or the other — that is, on the spiritual or the 
natural — may be temporarily obscured ; but all such 
experiences are necessarily transitory and incidental. 

Asiatic mysticism, with its negation of existence, is 
the expression of this falsity on the spirit side ; the 
career of the Prodigal Son is an exemplification of 
the extreme limit to which, on the side of material 
sense, this false thought can go with its consequent 
inevitable reaction. This parable is an universal 
gospel. 

There is a limit beyond which none can wander 
from the Father's house. All must come to them- 
selves eventually and retrace their steps. The time 
shall come to each when, having ceased from aberra- 
tions and attained an equipoise, he will move freely 
and joyously in his appointed orbit. 

What is true of the individual is true of the race. 
Our planetary humanity in its historical development 
had reached its aphelion distance at the birth of 
Jesus, since which time it has been retracing its 
course. This is illustrated in the diagram termed 
" Man's Historical Orbit." 

3. We have seen that from the sun to, the mineral 
there are three intermediate steps, viz. : light and 
heat, electricity, and the chemical elements ; so in 
man there are three mental degrees or planes of 
thought and feeling, finally ultimated in the body, 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 59 

which corresponds to the mineral. These, in the 
historical orbit chart, you will find marked " Devo- 
tional," " Rational," and " Perceptive." On the 
organic side, also, there are three steps between the 
mineral and the spiritual man, viz. : the vegetable, 
the animal, and the rational-animal man. 

4. We have seen, further, that a planet, according 
to its porosity or density, bears a definite relation to 
its primary as to receptivity of his forces. The more 
porous or negative it is, the further removed in space 
from its sun, and hence the more seemingly autono- 
mous in its movement. 

All this emblemizes man's conscious relations to 
God as to his receptivity of the Divine life and the 
consequent degree of his freedom. The smaller and 
denser planets like Mercury revolve around the sun 
rapidly, having much ado to maintain their separate 
existence ; while the larger orbs; such as Jupiter or 
Saturn, move majestically onward in their far-off 
spaces in comparatively long periods, apparently 
self-moved and self-poised. So the sensuous man, the 
man of little faith or receptiveness, is proportionally 
unconscious of his own greatness — of the sublime 
reaches of the Infinite within himself, and is con- 
tinually emphasizing his little external selfhood, 
moving agitatedly and fussily in a small orbit. 

It is a grand and blessed thought that the truth 
makes free. The fuller the sense of unity with the 
One, the intenser the individual consciousness and 
the freer the outgoings of the life. The truth is thus 
seen to be exactly the reverse of the lapsing of the 
individual existence back into the mystic Nirvana. 



6o THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

The " I Am " gives to his children to have the 
sense of life wholly in themselves. The more per- 
fectly they receive, the fuller their freedom from 
restraining dependence. 

5. A fifth correspondence between spiritual truth 
and natural phenomena is found in the laws of light 
and heat. 

(a) Light and heat, though emanations from the 
sun, are manifest as such only upon the body of the 
planet through conjunction of the sun's forces with 
those of the earth ; so God's life in man seems to be 
self-generated, constituting the natural selfhood. 

(J?) As the rays of the sun are refracted from 
their course by the planetary atmosphere, so the 
truth rays from God are turned aside by sense per- 
ception. 

(c) As the sun's rays generate substances noxious 
or innocent, disease or health producing, according 
to the nidus into which they fall, so the Divine life 
is manifested as truth or falsity, as love or malignity, 
according to the spiritual quality of the recipient. 

(d) As the sun's ray consists of three elements, 
viz. : light, heat, and chemical energy, the last of 
which is the combined resultant of the other two, so 
the ray of truth from God in man becomes affection, 
intellect, and their embodied expression in mental 
and physical activity in will. 

6. The planetary orbit is elliptical; so is that of 
man, both as an individual and as a race. The babe 
commences its course at its perihelion distance from 
the Divine Sun. Its conscious life is that of the 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 6l 

heavens. It always beholds the face of the Father. 
As the growth of the natural mind advances, there 
is a recession from God into selfness ; there is a going 
away from the Divine Sun. The time comes when 
the farthest point, the aphelion, is reached, and the 
return to the Divine Origin begins. 

So, also, as you will find marked in the historical 
orbit chart, our race history has pursued the same 
elliptical course. The Adamic race was the peri- 
helion of history, and its aphelion was at the birth of 
Jesus. 

Here is suggested a remarkable thought. It is 
this : The elliptical orbits of the other planets of our 
solar system reveal to us the fact that their race his- 
tory is similar to our own. When Science shall rise 
above its puling materialism and come to recognize 
the relation of spiritual truth to phenomena, she will 
be able to learn much of the mental and spiritual 
conditions of other worlds. Astronomy will be studied 
then not merely as a soulless, mechanical system, but 
as a moving picture of life and intelligence. 

7. Another correspondence between nature and 
spiritual truth is found in the words of Jesus to Nico- 
demus, " Ye must be born from above." This is a 
truth impressed upon all of nature's ongoings. The 
earth is born of the sun. The sun is the source of 
all planetary forces and substances. Take the sun 
away, and nothing of the planets would remain. In 
turn, the sun is born from a force above it. Imagine 
for a moment the cessation of the Divine Influx, and 
all would be a blank. And we have already seen 



62 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

(Orbit of Creation chart) that the vegetable was not 
born from the inherent force of the mineral below, 
but was generated from above. The same is true of 
the animal and of the human. And finally, as Jesus 
declared of Nicodemus, the spiritual man is born from 
above. This is but the annunciation of the universal 
law. It is but natural law running up into spirit 
spheres. 

8. All that we have said of the world and its forces 
in relation to God is strikingly repeated in the con- 
stitution of the individual physical man. The brain 
stands to the body as the sun to the planet. It is its 
source of life and action. Each atom and fibre and 
force of the body is born from the brain above. So, 
also, the brain is but a pulpy, inert mass of itself. 
Its life in turn must come from above ; that is, from 
the real man in and above all these phenomena. This 
body, in all and in particular, is but the externizing 
into visibility of the spirit life within. 

The real seat of sensation is not in the nerve that 
seems to feel, but in the soul which projects the 
nerves as a phenomenal symbol of the connection 
between its inner and outer self. The brain contains 
the principles of which the body constitutes the 
principiates, or outward extension, the nerves being 
the nexus. So the spiritual man in God is the prin- 
ciple, of which the natural mind and body is the 
ext^rnalization. 

If the body be wounded, the contused part seems 
to feel, but in fact sensation is found to be connected 
only with the nerve. The nerve, again, is discovered 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MISS WISE. 63 

to be merely a channel to convey sensation to and 
from the brain, which is the real sensorium of the 
body. However, on examination, it turns out that 
the brain itself has no sensation. It may be cut or 
rent without feeling. Thus, in the last analysis we 
find that all life is in spirit, and that the external has 
no being in itself. It is only a symbol of that above, 
from which it has its birth. 

9. Finally, the unity, the duality, and the trinity of 
the Creator are impressed upon all creation, of which 
the human body is the most striking example. God in 
his inmost esse is One. But to finite thought he 
is manifest as a duality of Love and Wisdom, out of 
which proceeds the third, power, the realm of the 
Holy Spirit. All his works are made in his image 
and likeness. 

The first expression of this is seen in the forces of 
the natural sun, which we may term caloric and ether. 
From this duality proceeds a third, viz. : light and 
heat. These, by their union, constitute electricity, 
thus forming another trine : electricity, by its posi- 
tive and negative properties rests in the chemical 
elements ; these, again, are positive and negative to 
each other and unite, forming the mineral substances, 
which is the lowest of nature's series of trinities. 

Now, ascending the organic side, we find that the 
duality exhibited in the positive and negative prop- 
erties of the mineral reappear in the element of sex 
which runs through every manifestation of organic 
life, whether of the vegetable or the animal. 

This duality shows itself also in the physical struct- 



64 the earth's use in the universe. 

ure of animals. As an illustration, we need only 
refer to the two halves of the human body. Thus we 
have two hemispheres in the brain, which decussate, 
the fibers from the right and the left sides passing to 
the opposite sides of the body. The heart has right 
and left auricles and ventricles. We have also two 
lungs, two ears, eyes, nostrils, hands, feet, etc., con- 
stituting a duality throughout. The trinity also is 
marked in the upper, middle, and lower ranges or 
degrees of the brain ; in the cerebrum, the cerebellum, 
and the medulla oblongata. 

And lastly, the duality of husband and wife resting 
in a trine and unity of one compound personality 
form the completest and highest link in this chain of 
Divine analogies in nature. Marriage is a symbol of 
the union of God to man actualized in the relations 
of Jesus Christ to humanity. 

Thus crudely and briefly I have endeavored to 
sketch some of the general correspondences between 
nature and spirit. Generals, of course, include partic- 
ulars. Every natural phenomenon is linked to a 
spiritual entity as its cause and of which it is the 
symbol. 

Nature is externalized spirit. And as all spiritual 
truth revolves around the central truth of man's in- 
carnation, or the unitization of his natural conscious- 
ness with that of the Divine ; so all natural phenom- 
ena must primarily exfigure this truth, and find its 
explanation therein. 

Very sincerely, your friend, 

F . 



MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 65 



IX. 

MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 

My Dear Teacher : Your last two letters have 
been read in our club, and, to some extent, discussed. 

The vastness of the subject grows upon me. Since 
I wrestled with Butler's Analogy at school, I have 
found nothing that taxes my thought so much as the 
endeavor to take in the full scope and bearing of 
your teaching. I wish that you would publish your 
thoughts, so that we could have them in book-form. 
In our meetings, we have scarcely reached the sub- 
ject of your last letter. Our time has been taken up 
with the Christ question, and we seem to be slow in 
getting it settled. It has excited quite a discussion, 
and various opinions have been advocated. 

Mr. Priest's notion is that he is one of three dis- 
tinct personalities. I suppose it is the view enter- 
tained in general by materialistic theologians. 

Dr. Manuel contends that Jesus was the Absolute 
Deity in form of man, and hence, that his appear- 
ance of suffering and weakness was only a seeming, 
and the result of the low sense conditions into which 
the Divine Influx came. The obscuration of the 
Infinite perfection had its ground in the receptive 
states of his disciples and of the world. His growth 
from childhood to manhood and his final glorification 



66 the earth's use in the universe. 

measured the advance of his followers in the recog- 
nition of the Christ in the person of their Master, up 
to the point of their perceiving him to be absolute 
God. While the aspect which the Divine Truth as 
represented in him took on, in the view of unre- 
generate humanity in general, was illustrated by the 
treatment received at the hands of Pilate and the 
Jewish mob, thus fulfilling Isaiah's prophetic vision 
of him as one who was " despised and rejected of 
men." 

Mr. True insists that Jesus is God, and at the same 
time perfect man — not God nor man alone, but God- 
man. 

Father has not fully expressed himself, but I am of 
the opinion that he takes Jesus to be only a man, and 
born under the same laws and conditions as others. I 
do not think he believes much in the immaculate con- 
ception. He seems to accept Christ as being a supe- 
rior specimen of humanity and as such affording a sort 
of lay-figure upon which to hang the drapery of our 
idealization, but in no sense God more than other 
men, nor in his birth and life in any way peculiar. 

Mrs. M has taught us to distinguish between 

Jesus as a man and the Divine, the Logos, or the 
Christ with which he was imbued. He was, as she 
teaches, merely man, but a model man, and as such, 
an unerring teacher and a complete exemplification of 
the truth. When he declares his unity with God, he 
is speaking as the Christ — as God; when he speaks 
of his limitations, he refers to the man, Jesus. 

Mrs, Goode says little. I think, however, that she 



MISS WISE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 6j 

has the theosophic notion of Jesus, as being only one 
among other Christs — one who through a long series 
of incarnations had worked up to the point of human 
perfection, and who voluntarily became reincarnated 
on our planet as a sort of Saviour-missionary. 

Now, as you may well imagine, I am confused with 
this babel of conflicting notions. What you have said 
on the subject does not suffice to give me an under- 
standing of your entire thought. 

Of course, I shall try to follow your admonition 
not to look to any one as authority, but I find myself 
longingly turning to you with the hope that you may 
be able to speak the word that shall let in light upon 
this dark place. 

Your loving pupil, 

Mamie . 

P.S. — Mrs. Goode, upon reading my letter, says I 
have misrepresented her to you. I tell her to write 

you herself and make the correction. Mrs. M 

has left our club in disgust. She says you are 
" unscientific " ; that means with her, heretical. 



68 the earth's use in the universe. 



X. 

MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 

Dear Sir : Through my friend Miss Wise, I feel 
as though I were personally acquainted with you. 
This, taken in connection with my desire to correct a 
wrong impression which our mutual friend has unwit- 
tingly given you of my views, on the vexed subject 
of the Christ, and my hope of calling you out more 
fully in that connection, will, I am sure, suffice to 
absolve me from seeming presumption in addressing 
you. Of all questions, this has been to me the most 
perplexing. The difficulty with me has been to get 
the truth on the subject arranged in a consistent and 
harmonious whole. 

In every variety of view I see some truth, but not 
one seems consistent with all the rest nor with the Bib- 
lical record taken in its entirety. Upon this, which 
you rightly place as the central truth, I have been at 
sea without rudder or compass. Steering in whatever 
direction, my mental bark has come upon breakers. 
Pardon a brief statement of my experiences. 

My earliest teachings were those of trinitarianism, 
or rather, as I should now term it, tritheism. For 
do not three persons with three distinct qualities and 
three distinct offices constitute three Gods ? 

In the trinitarian scheme of salvation, the Father 



MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 69 

is represented as being angry and requiring to be 
appeased ; the Son as merciful and suffering as a 
substitute for the condemned sinner; the Holy Spirit 
as the active agent in carrying into effect the agree- 
ment between the other two persons of the Godhead. 

I tried, as I was taught to do on pain of damna- 
tion, to think of them as one God. But it was impos- 
sible, and I gave it up ; but yet, in my inmost being, 
I knew that God is one. 

I sought refuge in the Swedenborgian view, viz. : 
that the Infinite God clothed himself in nature by 
material substances taken from the Virgin Mary. 
This human nature was of course imperfect. God, 
in this infirm humanity, was Jesus Christ. Gradually, 
this natural human substance was transformed into 
Divine substance, which transformation was com- 
pleted at the deathr of Jesus. 

This doctrine for a time gave me some rest from 
tritheistic thought. But I soon found that I had only 
substituted (to my mind) one mystery for another. 
I do not pretend to have thoroughly understood the 
teachings of the great Swedish seer. I did not (as I 
probably should have done) study him at first hand. 
But the interpretations of their master by his follow- 
ers, as it seems to me, finally resolve themselves into 
about this : God, in whom there is no shadow of im- 
perfection, is represented as clothing himself with a 
body of material substance and so forming himself 
into a finite being, thereby losing sight of his own 
identity. For, in this imperfect humanity, they tell 
us, he was a being so distinct from himself that he 



70 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

could pray to the indwelling Father, that is, to him- 
self as if he were not himself. He had an unreal 
consciousness distinct from the real, the clouds of 
which, occasionally parting, revealed himself to him- 
self. This idea I was compelled to abandon as un- 
tenable, unthinkable. 

I next tried to find mental peace in the theory that 
Jesus was just an ordinary human being like the rest 
of us, only, somehow, more highly spiritually devel- 
oped. But on mature reflection, I saw that such a 
notion was in the face of the facts recorded of him 
by his biographers. Moreover, his character as por- 
trayed by them was such as to preclude the possibil- 
ity of his being by natural law a production of his 
times or of his environment. Besides, such a theory 
does not satisfy the demands of the heart for a 
Saviour. 

How could a mere man say as he said, " Before 
Abraham was, I am." Suppose a man in this day so 
to surpass all his fellows in spiritual development and 
so to realize a conscious oneness with God, as to jus- 
tify the application to himself of Jesus's saying, " I 
and the Father are one," could he on the same 
ground assert a claim to pre-eminence over others as 
to a priority of existence such as is implied in the 
language of Jesus above quoted ? 

Or, again, how could one who had merely risen to 
a higher plane of spiritual advancement, on any such 
ground assume to be "the resurrection and the 
life," and say, " He that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live " — "I am the vine, ye are 
the branches," etc.? 



MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 7 1 

No, he was more than ordinary man, or the record 
is not true. 

Next, I looked in the direction of Theosophy. It 
required me to accept the say-so of adepts which I 
had no means of verifying as true for myself. In 
other words, I was remanded to authority as the 
basis of my acceptance of truth. From this source, I 
got only one idea that seemed at all helpful. It was 
that Jesus had had a pre-existence, and thus hav- 
ing acquired his lofty development was reincarnated 
here for our salvation from the bondage of sense 
and sin. This hypothesis seemed to harmonize the 
Scripture teachings about him more fully than any 
other that I had before seen advanced. However, 
further thought has convinced me that reincarnation 
in whole or in part is an error. I am of the opinion 
that man's existence in nature is simply God mani- 
festing himself as individualized centers of manifes- 
tation. The natural mind or consciousness in nature 
is in order to that end alone. But our birth into the 
body fully effects our individualization. A reincar- 
nation, therefore, is wholly unnecessary. It is a 
step backward. To assume it in the birth of Jesus, 
however, is to grant the principle and to open the 
door for its indefinite extension. I was forced to the 
conclusion that it is not true in general nor in special, 
neither as a rule nor as an exception. 

Finally, almost hopelessly, I attended the teach- 
ings of Madam Mystik. Being tired and despairing, 
I abandoned myself to her thought. As directed I 
simply looked through the mental glasses she held 



J2 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

up before me. To my surprise, light dawned — a 
hazy light, to be sure, but one by whose gleam I can 
at least "see men as trees walking." 

She cuts the gordian knot by asserting that so and 
so is fact, and treating any attempt to rationally har- 
monize it with other facts as an impertinence. For 
instance, she assumes the individual, Jesus Christ, to 
be constituted of Jesus a man and of Christ the Infi- 
nite God somehow linked together into a sort of double 
consciousness, so that in the same breath this extra- 
ordinary personage may speak from the infirm human 
side of himself, or from the Infinite side. Thus he 
prays, " Let this cup pass from me"; " Not as I will, 
but as thou wilt" ; " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?" "Into thy hands I commend my 
Spirit"; "The Son can do nothing of himself, but 
what he seeth the Father do"; "I can of my own 
self do nothing"; "The doctrine is not mine, but his 
that sent me"; "The cup which my Father hath 
given me shall I not drink it? " " Of that day and 
hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven, 
neither the Son, but the Father." Now it is very 
manifest that it is not the Eternal Truth — God — 
that is here speaking. 

Again, it is said of him, " In the beginning was 
the Word (Christ, Truth), and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God." He says also of him- 
self, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life " ; 
" Before Abraham was, I am " ; " Come unto me all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest"; "I am the resurrection and the life"; 



MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 73 

" He that believeth in me shall never die " ; "I am 
the vine, ye are the branches " ; "I am the living 
bread which came down from heaven : if any man eat 
of this bread he shall live forever " ; " No one has 
seen God at any time ; an Only Begotten God — the 
One existing in the bosom of the Father — he inter- 
preted [him]." 

These and such utterances clearly point to Christ 
— Truth — God, or to the man Jesus speaking 
from Infinite Principle with which he is somehow 
identified. 

How it comes that 1891 years ago a man appeared 
who was so extraordinarily endowed, or what is the 
rationale of his constitution, does not in the least 
trouble our teacher. 

There is at least a great convenience in her way of 
solving all knotty questions in regard to the teaching 
and character of Jesus, viz. : the entirely ignoring 
them. 

Now, I come to speak of the (to me) strange part 
of my experiences in this connection. Ceasing to 
think, but simply looking in the direction indicated, I 
am filled with a quiet, calm assurance of the truth as 
projected in form along my line of vision. I see, not 
through reason, but in spite of reason. As long as 
I can keep down questioning thought, I am at peace. 
Madam Mystik says this is becoming as a little child 
in order to enter the kingdom. If so, I am willing 
to be a child the allotted time. But I must, ere long, 
pass from childhood to maturity. I am no longer in 
a state of impatience or unrest. But I hope to 



?4 THE earth's use in the UNIVERSE. 

emerge out of the dim dawn of perception into the 
noonday of a rational comprehension of the truth. 
The intuitively sensing that Christ is, and that he is 
what he is, partially appeases my present soul hun- 
ger ; but the only bread upon which I can feed with 
fullness of delight and which will permanently satisfy 
my inmost self, is an understanding of the how and 
the why he is what he is. For this, I look and wait. 
I look to you to turn on the light. 

Very sincerely and hopefully yours, 

Edna Goode. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 75 



XL 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 

My Dear Madam : Your writing me called for no 
apology. 

I shall be most happy to do what I may be able 
toward helping yourself and Miss Wise to a clearer 
perception upon the subject of your writing. But 
have you duly considered how great the task you 
impose upon me ? According to your own showing, 
past thought has failed so to grasp and elucidate 
this momentous subject as to relieve it of inconsist- 
encies. You ask me to "turn on the light" with a sort 
of matter-of-course air, as though in my experience 
such herculean feats were an every-day occurrence. 

But jesting aside, I appreciate the fact that your 
hope is based not on any personal superiority or men- 
tal strength, but upon the method of thought which 
we have been for a time pursuing together. 

In the name then, of our Spiritual Philosophy, and 
looking to its light, I cheerfully undertake the task 
of at least partially relieving your perplexities. 

First, let us address ourselves to the point as to 
Christ's ego ? Was he man, or God, or both ? 

In order to get at the proper standpoint whence 
this question can be answered, we must at the outset 
get an understanding of the constitution of natural 



y6 the earth's use in the universe. 

phenomena. It is not necessary that we should here 
go into an elaborate discussion of the philosophy of 
things. This will form a special department of our 
studies. What I want to do now is to point out cer- 
tain fundamental principles, and assuming them to 
be true in order to present use, ask you to look at 
the subject under consideration in the light of those 
principles. 

I. God is the All of Substance, Life, and Intelli- 
gence in the Universe. 

II. Man is God's thought, or expression of himself. 

III. Man's existence in nature is only his endow- 
ment with consciousness in a sense world in order to 
self-conscious individuality. 

IV. Nature is the thoughts and states of God in 
man externalized. There is no other origin for it. 
It always speaks of thought and affection in man. 
Nature is thus a shadow, a reflex, an outpicturing of 
man. 

V. The human body is a phenomenon of external- 
ized, individualized spirit. It is God's idea expressed 
in nature, or in a sense world. 

VI. The body of Jesus Christ, then, was what ? 
Was it other in its constitution than that of an ordi- 
nary man ? It could not have been. If so, then we 
have phenomena existent in some other way than as 
a projection of the Divine through man. 

But if his body was the expression of an individu- 
alization of God, then he was essentially man. His 
ego, like that of any other human being, was com- 
posed of the two elements, being and existence. He 






PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. JJ 

could be no other than thought expressed in the form 
of a self-conscious individuality. But this is exactly 
what every man is and all men are. 

To be sure, he was a more perfect expression of 
God in nature than other men. He comprehended 
the all of Divinity that can be comprised in a finite 
human form. " In him," as the Apostle expresses it, 
" dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Granted, 
then what ? Every man differs from every other in 
his individual genius. In some one respect each is 
superior to all others of the race. To get an idea of 
a perfect man, we must combine in one all individual 
perfections. Suppose such an ideal to be embodied, 
would he not be a man ? 

Now, God being essential man and expressing him- 
self as perfectly as can be done in a finite way, what 
other could be the result than just what Jesus Christ 
was and is ? He was a perfect expression of the 
Father, and, as such, a perfect medium through 
which the Divine outflowed. The Christ, the Divine 
in him, can no more be separated from the human 
than it can in any other man. Jesus Christ's ego 
was made up as is that of any other man, viz. : of 
being in God and existence in nature. There can be 
no ground for considering the Christ in him separate 
and apart from his manhood any more than in the 
case of any other regenerate man. - He is not, in his 
glorified state, the man Jesus and the Christ Princi- 
ple as two distinct and separate elements, but he is 
Jesus Christ, a perfect man, and so a perfect expres- 
sion of God in man. He is the Word, the Divine 



78 the earth's use in the universe. 

made flesh; that is, completely manifested in the 
natural degree. He is Divinity organized in human- 
ity not qualitatively differing from what shall be 
essentially realized in every other man. The differ- 
ence between him and others is quantitative. Others 
are points in the disk of universal humanity; he is 
the disk comprehending all points. 

Now, let us suppose that Jesus Christ, through un- 
obstructed development, came to conscious oneness 
with God, the ideal, the perfect, the complete, the 
full-orbed man, the resplendent temple of the Father, 
through whose every faculty the Divine Sun radiates 
its effulgence, would he not be just the character 
which his biographers describe? 

Suppose, again, the Christ child from the finite side 
to develop — to come to himself — gradually, to in- 
crease in stature even as others, to be subjected to 
temptation in all points like ourselves, only without 
yielding, would we not expect that there would be in 
him even as in others variations in his states ? At one 
time, his consciousness of unity with the Father would 
be perfect, while at another obscured, giving rise to 
those seemingly inconsistent phases of his experience 
that are told of him, he now declaring himself to be the 
Truth and the Life, and again crying out in agony, 
" My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
And once more, suppose that the power of God in 
humanity, the full consciousness of Sonship in each 
and all other men, can be attained only through the 
externalization in the natural mind of spiritual unity 
as it exists in God ; and further that by reason of the 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 79 

divisive falsities into which our race is plunged such 
unification can be accomplished only by and through 
vital conjunction with one who has conquered these 
false conditions in himself and acquired all power as 
Jesus did, would not the language, " I am the vine, 
ye are the branches," " I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life," be appropriately applied to him? He 
became the embodied Truth, and organic union with 
him is the way and the medium of life. 

You spoke of the thought of Jesus Christ as a 
mere man, not fulfilling your want as the Saviour. 
Let us note in what sense man needs a Saviour. 
First, he needs to know the truth. In order to this, 
there must be a theoretical exemplification of the 
facts that man is spirit and that all reality is spiritual. 
In other words, the truth requires to be practically 
demonstrated. 

Second, the necessary aid must be afforded in 
appropriating this truth. It is not sufficient that the 
question of eternal life be solved in his presence, but 
man must come into unity with a power superior to 
himself which can avail to absolve him from bondage 
to the false and give him the freedom of truth. 

We need to dwell here a little. Remember what 
man is. He is composed of being and existence. 
Existence is only externalized being. It is only 
spirit actively conscious in an external degree, and in 
such a way as to give the seeming of separateness 
from God. 

There is no substance or a something other than 
spirit underlying man's body or any other phenomena. 



80 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

These are all only spirit thinking and acting so 
and so. 

The ego, man, has two planes of thought and 
feeling, viz. : the internal and the external ; the one 
primary and essential, the other secondary and de- 
rivative. The one we call spiritual, and the other 
natural ; but in fact, they are both of the same sub- 
stance which we may call spiritual, meaning thereby 
that phenomena is primarily subjective and not an 
external substance, distinct from Spirit. 

We cannot too often repeat that the so-called spir- 
itual and natural minds are not two, but one ego, 
having consciousness on two planes. 

Now the natural consciousness is given by birth 
into a time and space appearance. By this, man is 
endowed with the capacity of seeming to have life in 
self and of beholding his thought states projected 
into external phenomena as a seeming of real 
substance. 

What is this natural mind for? What is it intended 
that we should do with it? Is it destined, as some 
tell us, merely to be ignored, destroyed, blotted out ? 
Is it intended, as others hold, that we should receive 
it as absolute verity ? What the race has done is 
plain enough. We have accepted it as essential 
truth. We have confirmed as absolute reality its 
declarations that we are in fact separate from God, 
that we generate life in and of ourselves, and that 
nature is a substantiality in itself, and so we have 
encompassed ourselves in a sphere of unreality, thus 
utterly losing sight of the fundamental truth that 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 8 1 

appearances are only externalized, subjective con- 
ditions. Thus we have made all reality to inhere in 
the seeming. 

The idea of the mystic is that the only use for the 
natural mind is to be ignored. But this is an oppo- 
site extreme of error. While the natural mind and 
external phenomena have no substantiality in them- 
selves, they have a use, and it is the part of wisdom 
to learn that use. 

The object which the external mind is intended to 
subserve is that of being a basis for a fixed selfhood 
of the spiritual in a space and time consciousness. 
Being born and thus becoming individualized, it is 
the province of the natural mind to turn to the source 
of its existence and open the way for the outflowing 
of the Divine and the union of the external con- 
sciousness into a oneness with that of the internal, 
thus following in the footsteps of the forerunner and 
exemplar of the race. He brought out and organized 
Divinity into his bodily conditions as a permanent 
basis and center of power. 

The fundamental difference, then, between Jesus 
and others is not in spiritual constitution or even in 
the ability to intromit himself to the interior plane of 
consciousness, so much as in his having by absolute 
obedience, brought out the Divine into the natural 
and so constituted it Divine Natural Humanity, or, as 
it has been termed, the Christ Principle in human- 
ity. He demonstrated, not that there is no reality 
in the natural plane of thought, but that there is no 
material substance underlying phenomena. 



82 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

So far, all is well. But his work did not end here, 
nor indeed is this the most important part of it. He 
opened the way through his own body whereby the 
Divine can flow into the natural of all humanity. By 
a vital union to him, the extreme sense degree of all 
men receives of the Divine flowing through him, and 
so he becomes a mediator, the medium whereby all 
can become constituted similarly to himself. The 
most casual reader of the Scriptures must see that 
by his life a remarkable change has passed upon 
the race in their conscious relations to the Infinite 
Father. Previous to his incarnation, the Holy of 
Holies symbolizing the immediate presence of the 
Divine was shut off from natural thought. Into that 
presence, none dared to enter — only the High Priest 
once a year with peculiar, preparatory rites. 

But upon the completion of his unition of the nat- 
ural to the Divine, the veil opening into the Holy of 
Holies was rent, so that now all in him become their 
own priests and kings. 

The tabernacle of God is now with men (in the nat- 
ural degree), and he dwells with them. 

Jesus Christ thus fulfills the predictions made con- 
cerning him as a Saviour — not as a mere index fin- 
ger pointing the way, but by becoming himself the 
way, a Divine power in the natural degree, lifting all 
men up into the higher self and uniting the higher to 
the lower. 

But assuming Jesus Christ to be all this, the ques- 
tions arise why ? and how ? Why this manifestation 
of perfect man in our humanity ? and why was it just 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS, GOODE. 83 

when it was ? Still further, how did it happen that 
he came under the conditions in which the man 
Jesus appeared? 

One reason why there should have come such an 
one as Jesus Christ is portrayed to have been, is im- 
plied in what we have already said. Why he came 
when he did, will appear when we come to consider 
man's historical development toward the end for 
which he was created. 

It will suffice, for the present, to say that the ends 
to be subserved by his incarnation could not have 
been accomplished by his having been born at any 
other period in the world's history. But of this here- 
after. 

Let us consider the point embraced in the question 
of " how ? " How did it happen that this man was so 
superior to all others in his spiritual consciousness that 
he, par excellence, was the Son of God ? Very mani- 
festly, he was not, by the ordinary laws of heredity, 
the product of his times and of his environment. 

Then how account for him ? Here we must recall 
some ideas already presented. When in the process 
of development the mineral, the earth, was adapted 
to become the home of the vegetable, it sprang into 
existence ; so also the animal appeared when the 
lower creation was prepared for it ; then the natural 
or rational animal, — man. Each appeared in the ful- 
ness of its time, and each when once brought into 
existence perpetuated its species by the process of 
natural generative law. 

But how did the first of each higher grade come to 



84 the earth's use in the universe. 

be ? The mineral did not produce the vegetable, nor 
the vegetable produce the animal by any self-inherent 
force. No more did man evolve inherently from the 
animal, nor can spiritual man be the offspring of the 
natural man. Like can only beget its like. By the 
process of natural law, the Christ-man could no more 
have had his birth from the Fatherhood of the rational 
animal man than the animal could have been gene- 
rated by the vegetable seed. He could not have 
developed out of something below his plane. 

The difference between ordinary man and the 
Christ-man (the man born from above, of which 
Jesus Christ was the forerunner and first representa- 
tive, the first-born) is as great as that between the 
vegetable and the animal. 

We know how the first animal and the first man 
respectively sprang into existence. There could be 
but one way. They were born from above by spirit 
generation. The lower in each case served as the 
matrix, womb, or motherhood, while the Divine Influx 
was the Fatherhood. How was it when the spiritual 
type of man came to be introduced ? The unlettered 
fishermen who gave us the account, anticipating 
science by two thousand years, tells us that this 
supreme development was in line with all that had 
preceded it, viz. : that God, Spirit, was the Father. 

"But," says an objector, "such a birth was not in 
accord with natural law." No; neither was the gen- 
eration of the first vegetable or that of the first animal 
in accordance with natural law. 

In fact, in the sense ordinarily apprehended, there 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 85 

is no such thing as natural law. What we call such, 
is merely the outbirth of spirit according to the method 
imposed on it by the fixed forms of thought, on any 
given plane of life. 

All births and growths are but phenomenal expres- 
sions of spirit. In the process of race unfoldment, 
the time came for the last advance, viz. : birth of the 
natural into God-consciousness. When we come to 
consider the philosophy of creation, we shall see that 
in the planetary unfoldment from its first condition 
of gaseousness — its formless and void state, as the 
Mosaic account gives it — on, up through the various 
geological strata and successive appearances of animal 
and vegetable life, to the time when man emerged 
from the womb of the world-soul as an individual, at 
every step, external phenomena was but the outpictur- 
ings of the stage of development at which the spirit- 
ual man had arrived in his advance toward individu- 
ality. So, when in the process of the race unfoldment, 
it had advanced to the point where the last and final 
step could be taken, that is, the unitizing of the 
individual natural consciousness with God, there was 
a phenomenal outbirth and expression on the plane of 
nature of this evolutionary advance, even as there 
had been of each preceding degree. 

Such externalization appeared in the man Jesus. 
In the manner of his birth, and in each event of his 
life, were externally pictured the birth of Spiritual 
consciousness in every regenerating man, and its 
successive unfoldment on up to its completed unition 
to the Divine. Here, again, we see how scientific 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE V. 

I. The Infinite Sun of Life is represented as radiating from a center 
within two concentric circles. 

II. The circles represent the masculine and feminine elements of 
the natural man, one of which is the Fatherhood and the other the 
Motherhood in ordinary generation. 

III. The method of generation is the radiation from the Life within 
of a human germ, which is received by the masculine and thence im- 
parted to the feminine, the soul element being taken on from the former 
and the body element from the latter. 

IV. The Christ is represented as the result of Divine Influx directly 
into the feminine, or motherhood, without the intervention of the human 
fatherhood. Thus the soul element of Him is not merely an individual 
man, but the Divine Man, the summation of all humanity. 

V. In Him the human was Divinized; that is, the human con- 
sciousness, down to the lowest bodily conditions, was opened into the 
Divine. 

VI. Now by union to Him, the consciousness of ordinary humanity 
becomes opened into the Infinite. He is the vine; other men, the 
branches. He is the medium through which others become regen- 
erate. 



86 



Eia.be -V 




87 



88 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

fact is a picture book, in which spiritual truth is 
arrayed before us for our reading. In his facts, Dar- 
win was right ; in his philosophy he was wrong. His 
development theory needs only to be corrected by 
the knowledge of the philosophic truth that nature 
is but the phenomenalization of spirit, thus giving 
external fact a subjective setting, and all is clear and 
harmonious ; while without this, we are in a maze of 
mysteries and contradictions. 

Then, to return from this partial digression, we 
repeat that the first embodied expression of the 
spiritual in the natural was in the person of the man 
Jesus. 

He was born of a virgin ; that is, he was the out- 
birth of the spiritual, not through but above the 
plane of the lower degree, even as the original vege- 
table, animal, and man had respectively been before 
him. 

In this, he is but the prototype of the spiritual 
birth and growth of all who follow him in the regen- 
eration. He is the first-born, the representative, the 
head of the race, the way, the avenue, through 
which the natural consciousness of all others become 
opened out into the Infinite. 

By the manner of his birth and unfoldment he 
shadowed forth the truth that all is spirit, and exem- 
plified his own language, "Ye must be born from 
above," born out of sense into spirit. 

Herein only are met perfectly the demands of the 
human heart and mind, upon every plane of percep- 
tion, from the lowest sensual to the highest spiritual. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 89 

In the process of regenerating evolution he is seen 
first as man with only a halo of Divinity playing 
about him. He is the Son of man, shadowing forth 
to natural thought only somewhat higher than the 
mere human. From this initial stage, through suc- 
cessive unfoldings, the Divine Father in the Son is 
revealed more and more until finally the conscious- 
ness of unity with the Infinite is perfected, and in 
the language of the Apostle the Son also becomes 
subject unto him "that God may be all in all." 

The accompanying diagram (Plate V.) may 
be helpful toward getting the scientific idea of the 
manhood and the Christhood of Jesus as I have 
endeavored to portray them. 

The Infinite is seen radiating from a center within 
two circles. These circles represent natural man, 
the outer one the feminine, and the inner one the 
masculine of our humanity. To the right and the 
left is denoted the individual man, the limits of whose 
natural existence are comprised within the bounds of 
the masculine and the feminine of the natural man. 

A ray of light from the Divine Sun, a thoughf of 
God, is deposited in the masculine as the fatherhood 
(whose qualities it takes on) ; thence, passing to the 
feminine it clothes itself with a body from the 
mother, and so the man is born into existence in 
nature, and commences his career as a self-conscious 
individuality. The external consciousness of such a 
being by birth and natural development can never 
rise above nor penetrate beyond the natural degree. 
Consciousness of unity with his Creator must come 



90 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

through the inflowing of the spiritual. The natural 
is merely the matrix into which the germ of a Divine 
consciousness is to be born. It must die as a grain of 
wheat in the ground in order to a resurrection or 
growing up into the spirit. 

At the upper part of the diagram, the Christ is 
represented as being generated without the inter- 
vention of the human masculine, but directly by 
the overshadowing spirit. The Absolute Man, the 
Divine, takes to itself a body directly, from the 
feminine in humanity. While the boundaries of his 
conscious ego include the finite on the one side, it 
takes in the Infinite on the other. Doubtless, the 
consciousness of Jesus was developed spiritward by 
the same law and processes as in the case of the 
ordinary man, viz. : by the death or displacement of 
the natural. He grew in stature as other boys. He 
was a natural man as other men, and had all human 
appetites and sympathies. But his interior nature 
opened directly into the Infinite. No finite veil of 
natural fatherhood shut off from consciousness of 
his Heavenly Father. Thus, while very man, he was 
nevertheless a discrete degree as to his exterior 
consciousness above ordinary humanity. Jesus 
Christ grew to a sense of interior identity with the 
Father naturally, as an ordinary child grows to man- 
hood. He could speak of himself as "the Son of 
man, which is in heaven.' , His spiritual man flowed 
out by a natural process of development, and dis- 
placed the natural consciousness, and so he came to 
realize the Divine in the extreme sense degree. He 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 9 1 

became consciously one with the Father in his very 
flesh and bones. Now those who enter into conjunc- 
tive unity with him, as indicated by the arrows in the 
chart, consciously open out into the Infinite in the 
Christ even as the consciousness of Jesus opens out 
into the Infinite Father, verifying his words, " Thou 
Father in me and I in Thee, that they may also be 
one in us." 

In order to get this whole subject before us in 
brief, I will conclude this lengthy letter by an epit- 
ome of facts and principles. 

1st. God to our finite thought is exhibited as 
essence, form, and manifestation. In essence he is 
the Father ; in form, the Son ; in operation or mani- 
festation, the Holy Spirit, with all creative results. 

We may illustrate this by individual man, who is 
the image and likeness of the Divine. The factors 
which go to make up individual existence are prima- 
rily the affections, which correspond to God's Love ; 
secondarily, the affections taking form in the thought, 
which corresponds to God's Wisdom ; third, the union 
of these in one personality, together with their active 
outgoings of whatever kind, which constitutes a third 
degree of man, corresponding to God's operative 
energy. 

But spiritual man is God's thought. Then uni- 
versal spiritual man is the Son, the so-called Second 
Person in the Trinity. He is God in the second 
degree, even as in the Godhead the Father is the 
first degree. Then it follows that Jesus Christ being 
a perfect expression of spiritual man in nature, he is 
by very virtue of this fact at the same time God. 



92 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Then how about other men ? They are each also 
limited manifestations of God. They are all Sons, 
but unconscious of their origin and birthright. 

Qualitatively, then, as we have said, in essential 
being Jesus Christ and man are one. In himself, he 
has brought down the Divine into external conscious- 
ness. In him the Divine is now organized into the 
natural degree. Thus it becomes accessible to the 
natural consciousness of all men, there being no space 
separation between him and other humanity. The 
Divine in the natural degree as exemplified in him 
may be termed the Divine-Natural-Humanity, the 
Christ-Principle, or what we will. It dwells in every 
one and awaits only recognition, in order to manifest 
itself as the Comforter or Holy Spirit, the active 
agent in developing the individual into conscious 
unity with the Father. 

2d. Christ's birth without the intervention of an 
earthly father, while not in the least invalidating his 
constitution as a man, lifts him at once above the 
plane of the ordinary man ; that is, the rational 
animal. 

3d. Through his mother Mary, he came into 
rapport with all our humanity, in its natural degree. 
Thaf is, he entered into the body of the race, inherit- 
ing in the natural mind all its falsities and evils. 
Thus he was assaulted by temptation as other men 
are. 

4th. By the peculiarity of his immediate relation 
to the Divine, he was enabled to withstand all mortal 
mind pressure toward the evil and the false, and so 
was kept from sin. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 93 

5th. He passed through successive stages of de- 
velopment, just as other men do. To his conscious- 
ness, the inflowings of the devil appeared just as it 
does in the experience of others, to be generated in 
himself. Thus, he suffered as others suffer, and 
more, in the ratio in which he was more sensitive. 

His changes of state from rejoicing in his con- 
scious oneness with the Father, through all the varying 
degrees of perception down to the spiritual darkness 
and suffering of Gethsemane and Golgotha, perfectly 
accords with this idea of his Divine human character. 

6th. The constitution of his natural degree illus- 
trated by the manner of his birth gave him a con- 
sciousness of the Infinite, such as no other man in the 
natural degree possesses. Yet, it does not essentially 
differentiate him from others as a veritable man. 

While no other can come to say with the fullness in 
which he said it, " I and the Father are one," yet the 
race will in him rise qualitatively to the same plane 
of perception, and so all come to consciousness of 
unity with the Father. 

In the view which we have been endeavoring to 
give of Jesus, there is not an expression in the account 
of him nor a power ascribed to him, whether as man 
or as God, but is perfectly consistent and harmonious. 
Nor is there a want in humanity but that is thoroughly 
provided for. 

There ceases to be any necessity in the interests 
of consistency for those violent distortions of Scrip- 
ture to which you refer, those marvelous feats of 
critical legerdemain, by which he is emasculated either 



94 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

as to his Divinity or his humanity ; or by which they 
are combined in such a manner as, on the one hand, 
to place the Infinite Father in the role of so clothing 
himself in nature as to lose sight of his identity, or 
on the other, of coupling together two egos, viz. : that 
of a man and that of God, and bringing the one or 
the other forward to speak and act as the exigencies 
of the case may demand. 

Qualitatively, no expression of the Infinite One 
can be conceived of greater than spiritual man. 
Quantitatively, there may be and are among men in 
the natural degree, differences as to the extent and 
manner of reflecting the Divine. Let us conceive 
one who perfectly reflects the Divine Father, and 
what have we in our mind but the ideal man Jesus 
Christ? — not the Infinite One as differentiated from 
his idea man, but the Infinite One expressed through 
his idea, and perfectly expressed because the medium 
is perfect. Then, looking into the face of Jesus 
Christ, we see the Father and at the same time man ; 
not one or the other respectively, but both in one 
ego. 

Yours in the Truth, 

Theo. Fontaine. 



MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 95 



XII. 
Mrs. Goode to Professor Fontaine. 

My Dear Sir : I have read and reread your 
letter many times. Please accept my thanks for your 
masterly exposition of the subject. I shall have to 
take further time for thought. So far as I have 
heard, there is not a dissenting voice among us as to 
the truth of what you say, and as for myself and your 
pupil, we feel as though the stone was about to be 
rolled away from the door of the sepulcher. 

The central idea embraced in your Pauline text, as 
to the object of our race's existence, begins in my 
mind to assume more definite outlines. I perceive 
also, with a clearness that I have never been able to 
do before, that all nature symbolizes spiritual truth 
and is explainable only upon that hypothesis. 

I do not yet understand fully the philosophy of 
the constitution of natural substances, but the glimpses 
which I have obtained will enable me to wait with 
patience its further elucidation. 

But upon the historical feature of the Christ ques- 
tion I am anxious for more light. All along, you 
have taught that man's history is a development 
toward the great end of his creation. This, of course, 
must be true. You have further assumed that the 
Christ-man is the pivotal point of history. This, also, 



g6 the earth's use in the universe. 

I can see to follow from the assumption that he is 
the Divine, incarnate Head of the race in whom and 
through whom our humanity is unified in one body 
for the indwelling and radiating of infinite Love and 
Wisdom to other races of the universe. 

Now I have been, to some extent, a student of his- 
tory. I suppose my experience is a very common 
one of dissatisfaction with simply knowing the facts 
or events as history records them, yet I have never 
been able to penetrate beneath these facts and un- 
cover the grand principle that underlies them. Nor 
have I ever read any author who, on any other basis 
than that of theoretical and fanciful assumptions, 
attempted to do so. 

At first, I was disposed to treat your ideas, as out- 
lined in the historical orbit chart and partially pre- 
sented in your letters, as a mere theory without any 
solid foundation in fact. But upon examination, I 
have changed ^,my mind. Your theory has startled 
and aroused me, opening up a world of beautiful 
truth along this my favorite line of thought and in- 
vestigation, and I am all aglow with anxiety for you 
to come to where, in your exposition, you will treat 
more fully on this part of your course. 

I most heartily unite with your friend Miss Wise 
in hoping that, ere long, you will pay us a visit. We 
are resolved on having you come if possible. 

She sits by me while I write and joins me in the 
kindest regards. 

Yours hopefully, 

Edna Goode. 



MRS. GOODE TO PROFESSOR FONTAINE. 97 

P.S. — Pardon me. I should have mentioned that 
in our club talks on the subject of your letter, a ques- 
tion arose as to how Christ Jesus was, as you say, 
the first-born into the spiritual degree. I cannot 
suppose that we are to understand him to have 
been the first of the race to be intromitted into con- 
sciousness of spirit. The history of the race previous 
to his coming forbids this idea. Then in what sense 
was he the beginning of a new creation or type of 
humanity above the ordinary man, even as the natu- 
ral man is a plane above the animal, that above the 
vegetable, etc. ? 

Again, why can other men never come to say with 
the fullness with which he declared of himself, " I 
and the Father are one ? " 



98 the earth's use in the universe. 



XIII. 

PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 

My Dear Mrs. Goode : Yours received. You are 
correct in assuming that I do not mean to deny con- 
sciousness of spirit in our race antecedent to the 
Christ. What I meant to say was that up to the 
period of the Incarnation of Christ there had not 
been nor could be a practical realization in the natu- 
ral range of existence, of unity with God. Man is 
composed in general of two zones of consciousness, 
viz. : the spiritual and the natural. Previous to the 
advent of the Divine, and its organization in the 
natural degree in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, 
the consciousness of spirit had never been brought 
down into the external as a fixed organic embodiment, 
in such way that the two ranges of thought and feel- 
ing constituted a unity. Originally, in the paradisia- 
cal age the race-consciousness was posited primarily 
and exclusively upon the plane of the spiritual. The 
external world was unreal and shadowy. Man's life 
was altogether internal. The report of the senses 
was regarded by him as a purely subjective experi- 
ence. Such a state was not designed to be perma- 
nent. 

It was designed that the race should establish a 
consciousness on the outer planes as well as the 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 99 

inner. But normally man should, in his evolution 
outward, have carried with him an openness to the 
interior, thus incorporating the spiritual into the 
external. 

In this way the heavens would have been brought 
into organic unity with the earth plane of thought 
and feeling. 

But the race in this descending evolution failed in 
their adherence to the higher law, and so lost the 
sense of spirit in the opening of their consciousness 
outward. Man lapsed altogether into sense, and a 
veil was drawn, wholly shutting out the inner realm. 

He became materialized. In this state, he could 
realize spirit only by a process of intromission, or 
laying to sleep the external. In the ordinary con- 
scious life of the masses the sense realm alone 
was real. Dense clouds of materialistic falsity over- 
arched the mental skies so that no ray from the 
Divine Sun within could penetrate them. Knowl- 
edge could be received only through the senses and 
sense intellect. Intuitive perception ceased. Hence 
arose priests and prophets as intermediaries between 
God and man. They by special preparation lifted 
the veil in themselves and received for the people. 
The truths which formerly were known to all by an 
internal dictate, were now taught in external, symbol- 
ical ceremonials. For ages, you will remember, as 
recorded in the Old Testament, all revelations were 
made to the people through external media. Men, 
or heavenly messengers in material form, addressed 
their communications from without. The natural 



100 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

mind was not receptive of the truth as taught by- 
Jesus, that the kingdom of heaven is within. The 
essence of the truth to them consisted in the external 
symbols representing it. To the Jew, the forms and 
ceremonies of his external ritual service were the 
very substantial truth itself. He looked no farther 
nor deeper than the form. And they who were 
raised up to be the media of conveying truth to the 
people, and who " spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Spirit," were intromitted into interior condi- 
tions, and their natural minds were held in abeyance 
in the performance of their office, somewhat in the 
same way as spiritual mediums now speak in trance 
states. 

But when Christ came, he in himself and thus for 
the race, opened the interior way, so that the spiritual 
might flow out and become consciously recognized by 
and appropriated in the natural degree, even to the 
extremest bounds of sense, thought, and feeling. 
Jesus evolved a divine consciousness in his every 
faculty of soul and body, and so became embodied 
Divinity in his own ego. That is, he became Divine 
Natural Humanity. The rending of the veil in the 
temple at his crucifixion typified the rending of the 
veil between the natural and the spiritual in him and 
through him for all humanity, so that now all men 
may become kings and priests unto God. The time 
had come, as he said to the woman at the well in 
Samaria, when men would worship neither at Jerusa- 
lem nor in that mountain, but would worship in 
Spirit and in truth. 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. IOI 

Here we touch the vital point of Christianity. 

It was not so much in that he taught men to look 
to spirit and God as the primary substance and source 
and essence of all things, that he was the Christ ; nor 
that he was in any way superior to all others in his 
directing the race from the phenomenal to the spirit- 
ual as the underlying reality. Buddha and others had 
done this before him. That which differentiates 
him from all others, and which constitutes him the 
Christ, the only Christ and Saviour, is that while he 
turned the thought of the race back to God as the 
Fountain of life, he also taught and exemplified in 
his own soul and body that the Divine may be and 
must be brought out into the natural and organized 
therein. He was the first to do this ; and he expressly 
declares that it is only by a vital organic union to 
him, not merely as the Christ principle, as some teach, 
but as the Christ principle organized into an em- 
bodied ego of Divine Natural Humanity, that any 
other of the race can be saved ; that is, that any one 
can be in soul and body organized into a Divine ego 
like unto him. This it is which constitutes salvation. 
It is for this that our race was brought into existence. 
Now, since his incarnation there has been going for- 
ward a readjustment of the whole race in embodied 
unity in him. Those who lived previously to him, 
even the godly and obedient, had not become divi- 
nized in the natural degree, but had only succeeded 
in repressing the evil and the false in themselves, and 
so in bringing the external mind into a state of qui- 
escence. Now, since the cry on the cross, " It is fin- 



102 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

ished," to those who made up the old heavens, the 
Gospel of the Divine Natural Humanity has been 
preached, and they have been in the process of ac- 
cepting the truth and entering into unity with the 
Divine Natural Man, just the same as we of the nat- 
ural world have been doing. The New Heavens, called 
the New Jerusalem, has been organizing as the body 
of the Christ, and the whole race has pari-passu been 
evolving towards that culminating crisis when evil is 
to be cast out and consumed and God is to be all in 
all. These old heavens are some of those people 
probably to whom Christ referred when he said, 
" Other sheep have I who are not of this fold." And 
to this building up of the New Jerusalem — the New 
Heavens — and arraying it as a bride adorned for her 
husband, and which in Revelations we are told is de- 
scending from God out of heaven to meet the ascend- 
ing earth, the Lord probably referred when he said, 
" I go to prepare a place for you." 

Now you can easily see from all this in what a 
transcendent sense Christ Jesus stands forth as the 
typical man, the First-born of the new race of the 
Divine Natural Humanity. And you can see how 
far short of the truth they fall who think of him only 
as a man, and not as the man. They who name him 
in the same category with others such as Budha, 
Zoroaster, etc., show that they have yet to learn the 
prime element of the truth of Christianity. He was 
not the first of the race who has had an intromission 
into spirit consciousness, but he was the first-born of 
the Divine Natural phase of Humanity. And, as such, 



PROFESSOR FONTAINE TO MRS. GOODE. 103 

he springs from the natural man as the mother womb, 
with God as the Father, even as the natural man in 
the course of evolution had sprung from the animal, 
that from the vegetable, etc. Christianity is not 
merely a teaching and an exemplification that man 
may, by concentrating his gaze upon the spirit within 
and shutting out the natural, become conscious of 
spirit ; but it is the teaching the truth of the Divine 
Natural, and through Christ, the organized center, the 
giving all men the power to bring out the Divine into 
both soul and body, and so of bringing God to taber- 
nacle in man. Man thus becomes an organized em- 
bodiment of the Divine — a vicegerent of God within 
the bounds of his individual ego. 

Christ did not (as Budha did) deny existence. He 
accepted it as a fact and taught that it must be divin- 
ized — that is, that the very outmost range of bodily 
sensation-consciousness must be infilled with God so 
as to become one organic life with and in him. 
Within the bounds of each man's sense and thought uni- 
verse he must, and will, within and from Jesus Christ, 
come to say, "I have all power in heaven and earth. " 
To this end, was man born ; this blessed state every 
one is destined to achieve. As Moses lifted up the 
serpent in the wilderness, so Christ Jesus lifted up the 
sensuous in himself into unity with the Divine. The 
former was typical of the latter. And as the serpent- 
bitten Israelites, in looking upon the brazen serpent, 
were healed of the bite of the serpent, so the sense- 
poisoned and sense-dominated sinner, in looking to 
the Divine power dwelling in and flowing through 



104 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

the Divine Natural Humanity in the Christ — that is, 
to the Sense-Divinized Man, receives his outflowing 
spirit and is healed from all sense maladies. The 
Divine power focalized in the Natural of the Christ 
is on a plane of rapport with the outermost sense 
consciousness of the lowest degree of human thought 
and feeling, and thus can be recognized and received 
by all. The Divine has come to have power and ex- 
pression in the natural degree. 

This will suffice, probably, for the present. I trust 
that enough has been said at least to point the direc- 
tion of thought leading to an unraveling of your 
perplexities. 

You may, if you please, say to Miss Wise and the 
other friends that I am now so far freed from obli- 
gations elsewhere that I can carry out my long-cher- 
ished desire of visiting them. I hope in about a 
fortnight to be with you. 

In the meantime, as you are so much interested in 
the historical development of our race, I inclose you 
a popular lecture delivered some time ago. 

This may occupy your time till I come, when we 
can talk together instead of writing about these won- 
derful truths. 

Fraternally yours, 

Theo. Fontaine. 



LECTURE. 105 



XIV. 



LECTURE. 



Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me. — 
Psalm xl. 7. 

History ought to be the most interesting and prof- 
itable of studies. All truth is somehow God in mani- 
festation. Natural science is the classified facts and 
expression of the laws of so-called material creation. 
Philosophy, as studied, is an inquiry into second 
causes linking phenomena together. History is the 
study of the course and progress of our race-develop- 
ment toward the end for which we were created, and 
in its full scope embraces all other knowledge. It is 
a study of the characteristics of each period, not only 
in its relations to the rest, but in its relations to the 
whole. 

Now as man is the only real creation, and is the 
occasion for the existence of all other things on earth, 
by so much ought the study of his development 
toward the final end of his existence be of more 
interest and importance than that of phenomena in 
other relations. 

"Thou hast made him," says the Psalmist, "a little 
lower than the angels ; thou hast crowned him with 
glory and honor." 



I06 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

But history has not, among the hierarchy of studies, 
occupied this lofty pre-eminence. To most people 
it is comparatively dry reading, and its results upon 
character and education have been but meager. The 
reason for this is to be found in the manner in which 
it has been written, studied, and taught. For the 
most part, it has consisted of a mass of facts without 
any definite beginning or end, and without any 
unitizing idea. 

Historians have carried us as far back into the dim 
past as the torch of tradition can light them, and have 
arrayed before us a vast succession of peoples living 
under varied social conditions and regulations, but all 
having one thing in common, viz. : decadence and 
death. 

They exhibit in panorama, nation following nation, 
evermore rising and falling as the waves of the sea. 
They tell us of the tyrannies and corruptions leading 
to the fall of one people and the series of events 
associated with the rise of another, entitling these 
facts and sequences "the philosophy of history." 

The one prominent object has been the vivid por- 
trayal of the operations of men in butchering one 
another, and the glorifying of such leaders as have 
been successful in the massing of human beings for 
mutual destruction. A benevolent reader becomes 
surfeited and turns away in loathing from the con- 
stant scenes of brutality and tyranny, of lust and 
rapine which, in any ordinary history, are arrayed 
before him. 

The question arises in the contemplation of these 



LECTURE. 107 

horrors, "Well, what better am I for knowing such 
things unless some good can be made to appear as 
the end of it all ? Is there no great purpose, no goal 
toward which the race is developing, and to which 
these slaveries, tyrannies, and butcheries are to be 
made subservient ? Is there no general progress 
toward a predetermined destiny for the accomplish- 
ment of which these Satanic delusions are being 
utilized ? Has the human race no definite appointed 
purpose toward which it is moving, and towards 
which, as a factor in this movement, each age has its 
part to enact? " History is dumb in answer to these 
and such questions. 

But without such answer, what is history worth ? 
The common idea of historians is that there is no 
progress ; that we are evermore moving in a circle ; 
that what has been will be, and that the only lesson 
which the dreary past has in store for us is the 
ending of our civilization as that of others in the past, 
by submergence in a sea of blood, slavery, tyranny, 
barbarism, thus giving place to another advancing 
wave of humanity in our stead, it in its turn to sink 
as we shall have done, and so on indefinitely. 

Macaulay expressed the common sentiment in his 
prediction that the time would come when the pos- 
terity of some now savage tribe, sitting on the ruins 
of London Bridge, would meditate upon the archaeo- 
logical remains of England's extinct civilization, and 
inquire, as we now do in regard to the ruins of the 
Orient, what manner of people once had their habi- 
tations here, and what was the nature of their 
civilization ? 



108 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

If he is right, then the contemplation of the past 
records and actions of the race is but gazing into the 
dreadful maelstrom which is ere long to swallow us 
up as it has done the ages and nations before us. 
Let us turn our eyes away from our inevitable fate. 
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." But 
it is not true, what Macaulay said, and the better 
thought of the age is beginning to perceive it. 
Modern historians are ceasing to lay so much stress 
upon battles, sieges, fields of carnage, and the glori- 
fying of successful human butchers, and are begin- 
ning to inquire into the deeper meaning underlying 
phenomena. Progress is recognized as a fact, and 
the question is asked by historians, " What has been 
the particular part each age has played in the grand 
drama ? " This is a step in the right direction, but 
does not go far enough. 

It is only in the light of that deeper inquiry after a 
clear perception of the end for which our race itself 
exists, or the use intended by the Almighty for earth's 
inhabitants to subserve in the economy of the uni- 
verse, that we can understand the nature and mean- 
ing of the successive steps in the development of our 
history. If we know not the end, neither can we 
know the causes and effects looking to that end, as 
the ground of their existence. 

Thank God, the time has come when we can knc^w 
the object of our creation, and thereby understand 
the fundamental feature of each phase of our history. 
The bright electric light of a true spiritual philosophy 
thrown upon the Word of God enables us to discern 



LECTURE. IO9 

the signs of the present and to forecast the general 
course of the future. The key to history is found in 
my text, " Lo, I come : in the volume of the book it 
is written of me." 

A very remarkable fact in our world's history has 
to be accounted for. It is that all the great religions 
of the world have been founded on the idea of a 
Divine Incarnation. Prophetic voices, in all ages 
and with nearly all peoples from time immemorial, 
have been raised proclaiming relief to a burdened 
world through the descent into the race of a Divine 
deliverer. A Divine manifestation to sense percep- 
tion has ever been among all nations the center and 
mainspring of human hope. 

The worship of God embodied in humanity is the 
form in which the religious sentiment has ever ex- 
pressed itself. For our own race there seems to be 
no place of mental or spiritual restfulness other than 
in the apprehension of the " Word made flesh." We 
seem to be able in no other way to formulate God or 
to get any intellectual or affectional apprehension 
of him. Hence men have always worshiped the 
Deity, expressed through human form, as somehow 
incarnated. 

To intelligent thought, of course, the conception 
has not been that of a limitation of the Infinite One, 
but only that of human individualization, and therein 
a manifestation of the Infinite to finite capacity. 

I quote from Field's " Cosmos and Logos " : 
" Brahma, of the Hindus, is described in prophetic 
visions as incarnate in Crishna for universal salvation 



I 10 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

and restoration. Prometheus is a similar personifica- 
tion ; so is Mithras of the Persians ; the Buddha of 
Central Asia; the Horus of the Egyptians, and 
Adonis of the Assyrians. 

Not only in a general way is this doctrine of an 
Incarnate Deity embodied in these ancient creeds, 
but many of the very experiences of Jesus Christ are 
minutely predicted. Long ages prior to the time of 
Christ, the Sun God was recorded as being born of a 
virgin and performing miracles. The records of the 
Buddha so closely resemble those of the Christ that 
the Jesuit Fathers supposed that Satan had gotten 
up the Buddhist religion on purpose to confound the 
Christian Church. The Buddhist traditions go back 
to Buddha, the son of the Virgin Maia, who conceived 
him by a ray of light. His birth occurred on the 
25th of December. He was subject to dire tempta- 
tions ; he descends into Hades to teach the souls in 
bondage to evil. According to the early traditions of 
the Chaldeans, running back to ages before Christ, 
the time of the advent was astronomically foretold ; 
and this time corresponded with the birth of Jesus. 
Hence the visit of the sages or wise men of Persia to 
Judea, and their offerings to him of gold, frankin- 
cense, and myrrh. 

In some of the sacred books of China there is a 
record of the coming of the hero, or Divine One, his 
birth from a virgin, his low estate, his public teaching 
for three years, his sufferings for the deliverance of 
men from evil, his ascent into heaven, and his com- 
ing to judgment. To this Being they gave the 



LECTURE. Ill 

names, the Shepherd, the Most Holy, the Universal 
Teacher, and the Supreme Truth. 

Confucius had announced to the Chinese that the 
Holy One should appear in the west. The time 
which he had fixed accorded with the date of the 
birth of Christ. Hence, ambassadors were sent from 
China to Rome to ascertain if Augustus Caesar was 
the holy and expected one, who was to purge the 
world of evil. The time told by Confucius that 
should mark the great event was to be indicated by 
the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constel- 
lation of the Fishes. 

Plato, the Greek philosopher, spoke of that God 
who was destined to appear at some certain period of 
time, and impress himself on the universe in the form 
of a cross ; the Divine One, who should be scourged, 
fettered, tormented, etc. Plato learned his mythology 
in Egypt and the East, where Paganism had had its 
mythical crucified victims ages before. 

The following is the language of Zoroaster, the 
founder of the Magian faith : " In the latter times a 
virgin shall conceive a child, and when he is born a 
star shall appear shining in the daytime. Ye, my 
sons, shall first of all see this star. When ye behold 
it, go in the way it shall lead you. Worship the new- 
born babe and offer him your gifts. He is the Word 
who established the heavens." 

This will suffice to show that the doctrine of a 
Divine Incarnation has been a faith co-extensive with 
religious thought. All these prefigurations of the 
various religions of the world are but indices pointing 
to Him who was and is the fulfillment of them. 



112 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

We are all familiar, of course, with the fact that 
the coming of such a deliverer formed the entire 
basis, and most of the superstructure, of religious 
thought among the Jews. When the symbolic pair 
go forth from the garden of delight cursed with the 
stamp of sense upon them, a gleam of promise lights 
up the dark horizon, in the language, " The seed of 
the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." That 
is, one shall be born of woman who shall overcome 
the serpent sense, and lift it up in himself as Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that whoso- 
ever looks and believes shall not die. This promise 
was the bud which expanded and outflowered in such 
prophetic utterances as those of Isaiah. Seven hun- 
dred years before the birth of Christ, looking across 
the intervening space of time, he saw Immanuel, 
God with us, the desire of all nations, born of a vir- 
gin, having no form nor comeliness ; despised and 
rejected of men; bearing humanity's griefs and 
sorrows, his soul offered for sin, etc. The symbolic 
mother, Eve, is represented as rejoicing at the birth 
of Cain, supposing that in him she had received the 
fulfillment of the promise. And on up through the 
ages until the announcement of the angel to Mary, 
the Eves of the Church were ever in the attitude 
of Messiah-motherhood expectancy and hope. 

In Jesus, the Christ, was fulfilled all predictions as 
to a coming Saviour. Of him the text speaks. From 
the beginning, humanity had been in the process of 
preparation to become the medium of his appearance 
and work. While angels were said to be looking on 



LECTURE. 113 

in wonder and as having a desire to inquire into 
these things, the Apostle is inspired to point to Him, 
saying to us and all created intelligences : " Behold 
the mystery of the ages explained. God created all 
things pertaining to earth in order that now unto 
principalities and powers in the heavenly places, 
might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom 
of God, according to the eternal purpose which he 
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

A question suggests itself here, viz. : " Was man's 
deflection into sense falsity necessary to prepare our 
humanity for its use as subservient to the Incarna- 
tion ? " 

As a matter of fact, man did retrograde from a 
state of spiritual consciousness and perception into 
the delusion of materiality resulting in his subsequent 
and consequent sufferings. 

Did God design this ? No ; not in the sense of 
man's having no alternative. But, granting such 
deflection to be, God's eternal law compels it to 
subserve good — turns all its seeming forces into 
channels of beneficence. 

The exact design, so far as we can see, seems to 
have been this : First, the creation of a certain type 
or genius of humanity adapted to become the medium 
of God's manifestation and permanent embodiment 
therein as a means of his outflow in a peculiar way 
and in greater fullness to the universe in general. In 
order to this, it was necessary that this race should, 
under specific and peculiar conditions, evolve a con- 
scious perception in every range of mental and 



Pl^te VI 




114 



LECTURE. 115 

affectional life, so that the Divine influx might fill 
out and divinize even the lowest and most external 
faculties as well as the highest and most interior 
powers. 

But the development of a conscious life in these 
various departments of his complex being by no 
means necessitated man's yielding to sense delu- 
sion, or what we call evil. He might, normally, and 
without sin, have passed from the higher states suc- 
cessfully down to the lowest, and have fully devel- 
oped a power of perception upon each plane of 
thought and feeling. 

In the constitution of our existence there are 
three ranges, which we may term^ the Devotional 
or Spiritual, the Rational and the Perceptive. (See 
Plate VI.) In the body, which phenomenally corre- 
sponds with the mind, these three departments are 
respectively represented, first in the upper, middle, 
and lower ranges of the brain ; then in the head, the 
trunk, and the limbs ; again in the motor, the diges- 
tive, and the circulatory apparatus, etc. 

From Adam to Christ man's history consists in 
the formation of a religious selfhood in these several 
departments of his being, so that the race has to-day 
conscious religious life and perception in and from 
all these degrees of thought and feeling. The con- 
sciousness of some is dominantly in the one, of some 
in another, and each sees truth according to his own 
specific genius, no two seeing anything exactly alike. 
To him whose dominant life is in the first or devo- 
tional degree, the thought is not ratiocinative but 



Il6 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

intuitive. He does not reason and come at results 
by logical processes, but by an internal dictate. In 
his affections that which is most pronounced is his 
relations to the Lord. His love takes primarily the 
form of love to God, and secondarily of love to God 
in man. Truth is seen from this degree inspiration- 
ally, constituting the seer. 

But he who looks out from the second or rational 
plane has to arrive at results by reasoning. He 
philosophizes and theorizes. In the sphere of his 
affections, man comes first, and God is loved in man. 
The man in this degree formulates the truth and 
places it on a rational basis. Upon this plane dwells 
the teacher. 

The lower-story occupant of the mental house is 
differently constituted from either of the other two. 
He regards all things primarily in relation to their 
use. He sees a truth as a fact and asks about its 
practical utility. His love of God and man looks to 
some practical end. Intuition and theorizing are to 
him secondary to use. He is the practical man. 

And still further, upon each of these planes of 
thought and feeling there are three degrees from 
within, outward, which we may term the internal, 
the middle, and the external. These three degrees 
are represented in the body by the three departments 
of the brain, viz. : the cerebrum, or that part whose 
function is to direct and control the body through the 
voluntary thought and the senses ; the cerebellum, or 
that part which governs (through the sympathetic 
system of nerves) the involuntary life ; and third, 



LECTURE. 117 

the medulla oblongata, whose functional range is so 
interior as to be beyond external conscious percep- 
tion. 

Now we are all so constituted as to think with 
more ease and delight in some one of these degrees 
and departments than in the others. Such is our 
genius and will be forever. 

The original mental status of the Adamic man was 
in the highest degree and in the most interior. He 
rested upon the bosom of the Infinite Father as a 
child does in the arms of its mother. By successive 
steps the lower ranges have also been developed, so 
that now and since the advent, all three degrees are 
fully opened out in the race. Some minds dwell 
mostly in the lower story, some in the middle, and 
some in the upper, and the view from each is per- 
fectly satisfactory to those who live there. 

As of old, the genius of each is adapted to the 
exercise of certain functions, and the gifts of each 
vary accordingly. And just here let me add that this 
thought should be ever before us as a corrective of 
our judgment of others and should serve to give us 
the broadest charity. Truth is many sided. You see 
one aspect ; I another. Throughout the past ages, 
as man stepped downward, the status of the human 
mind came to be dominantly in each degree succes- 
sively. The lowest point was reached at the coming 
of Christ. Since then the development has been 
upward, the life of the risen Lord opening out into 
each degree in our humanity in the reverse order of 
descent. 



Il8 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Until the crisis of the flood, the devotional faculties 
predominated. Then until the call of Abraham, the 
rational powers were most prominent. Thence down 
to the Incarnation, the conscious life was in the per- 
ceptive or sensual. 

In the ascent, we have passed out from the lower 
into the rational and are rapidly developing into the 
still higher degree. We are entering upon a period 
where every type and degree of mind is unfolding 
into the sunlight of truth. 

The various types, subtypes, and varieties of spir- 
itual thought were illustrated in the persons of the 
Apostles. John represented spiritual love ; Peter, 
faith ; while Thomas was a type of the purely natural 
or lowest degree. John, in love, leaned upon the 
Master's bosom ; Peter, from an interior faith, saw 
and confessed the Christ as the Son of the living 
God ; but Thomas yielded only to the evidences of 
the senses. 

The seven churches of Revelations are several dif- 
ferent varieties of faith and love in various degrees, 
or their modifications. 

The four gospels are the same truths seen from 
four several standpoints. In any assembly of to-day 
all these planes of thought will have their represent- 
atives. 

What then ? Is it not the duty of the speaker to 
take in the broad field of truth and to adapt his 
thought to every variety of hearer ? Each auditor ' 
cannot have only his own shiboleth pronounced. The 
Church of the incoming age must be complex. It 



LECTURE. 119 

must be a concert, a harmonious blending of many 
instruments, not all alike nor playing the same part. 

What manner of man should the teacher be ? A 
sort of composite type of person, able to present the 
truth as seen from all the stories of the mental build- 
ing. Who is sufficient for these things ? There is 
abundant room here certainly for the exercise of 
charity. 

Now let us note the characteristics of each age, 
and as far as we may be able, the specific use of each 
in its bearing upon the great end. (See Plate II.) 

The period beyond the Noachian flood we know 
little of. The Biblical account, including the flood, 
is manifestly purely symbolical. It is the representa- 
tion of spiritual realities under cover of materialistic 
expressions. The genealogies there given are eth- 
nological or doctrinal. They do not record the names 
and ages of individuals, but those of tribes or peculi- 
arities of faith and life. 

The numbers, too, designating the ages of the 
patriarchs, are used as symbols of spiritual truth. 
They bear no reference to length of time whatever, 
so that no chronology can be constructed from them. 

One general fact, however, is patent. The open- 
ness to spiritual influx at that period given by the 
dominance of man's consciousness in the spiritual, 
or devotional faculties, capacitated him to become by 
perversion profoundly debased. He corrupted his 
way upon the earth. The record says that there 
were giants in those days. This means probably 
monstrosities of spiritual perversion. 



120 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Finally a spiritual crisis comes, symbolically de- 
scribed as a flood. An organic change ensues. The 
first age ends ; a new one dawns. An influx of life 
pours in upon the rational, and the race starts out 
upon a new career. Here, three historic personages 
appear, — Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These were the 
names of three historic peoples instead of three indi- 
viduals. History shows them as three great stocks 
of the white race. Formerly it was supposed that 
Ham was the ancestor of the negro. But that is now 
shown to be utterly out of the way. Ham or Cush 
was the stock of the white race that peopled Egypt, 
Chaldea, and some other districts, anciently. By that 
people the pyramids were built, and also the struc- 
tures of Chaldea, whose ruins are to this day the 
astonishment of the world. 

This was an age of rationalism, of theorizing. The 
religions and civilizations of the Orient mostly took 
their shape from the outraying influences of the Ham- 
ites. China and Japan were at that time crystallized 
into the form which they have since largely retained. 
The extent of this civilization was world-wide. The 
ancient ruins in Yucatan, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere 
on the American Continent, now being exhumed, 
doubtless date back to that period. 

If it be asked why this particular people should 
have thus developed into such prominence beyond all 
others, even of their own brothers of the white race, 
the Shemites and the Japhethites, the answer is this : 
By Divine selection, and for some reason relating to 
their peculiar genius adapting them to the perform- 



LECTURE. 121 

ance of the specific use designed in the development 
of that period, a particular people in each age has 
ever been taken as the medium of direct conjunction 
with God, and as an intermediary between God and 
the rest of humanity, and so for the time has been 
powerful, influential, aggressive, progressive, and his- 
torical. But upon the transference of the Divine 
torch from them to other hands, they have dropped 
out of view. Humanity being an organic unit, hav- 
ing a common life, such race, for the time, occupies 
somewhat the relation of the heart and lungs to the 
rest of the world-body. 

The first people after the flood, that were called 
to that position, was the Hamitic stock. Upon 
them rested the direct rays of the Divine Sun. All 
other nations sat in the twilight. Just how long this 
period continued we have no means of ascertaining. 
We know, however, that there was a teeming civili- 
zation in the valleys of the Nile and the Ganges, 
twenty-five hundred to three thousand years before 
the Christian era. About 1750 before Christ, the 
light of the truth, with the Hamites, having gone out 
in darkness, the sacred trust passed over to the care 
of their brethren, the Shemites. 

At this point there was another crisis. The Ham- 
ites had grown exceedingly corrupt. The pride of 
their hearts and their feeling of utter independence 
of God, are symbolically indicated by their proposing 
to build a tower reaching to the heavens ; and the 
deep depravity into which they fell is shown by the 
description given of Sodom and Gomorrah. 



122 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

The race now steps down upon the plane of the 
perceptive faculties and continues the descent to 
the lowest sense degree. This was reached at the 
Advent. 

The Shemites began their part in history at the 
call of Abraham. The mission of this people was 
not so much to develop a civilization as to become 
the medium through which the Word of God should 
be embodied, both in language and manhood. Or, 
in other words, their use was to give the world the 
Bible, and to become the medium of the borning of 
the Christ. Their history was an enactment of sym- 
bols representing spiritual truth, of which they had 
no comprehension. The very fact that they had no 
interior perception of the truth embodied in their 
elaborate ceremonials, adapted them to the perform- 
ance of the use to which they were called. Their 
whole national history, their relations to surrounding 
nations, the tabernacle and temple service, were a 
series of symbols of the profoundest spiritual signifi- 
cance, the meaning of which, even to this day, is but 
slightly understood. Paul spoke of the veil worn by 
Moses with respect to the Jews of his day. Chris- 
tians have not yet succeeded in removing it. 

Finally, as a culminating act in the part played by 
the Jews in the historical drama, came the Son of 
Mary. They having performed the grand purpose 
to which they were called, from them as from their 
Hamitic predecessors the Divine forces are with- 
drawn, and the light of truth now passes into the 
hands of the third race of the original trio, viz. : the 



LECTURE. 123 

Japhethites, who had been in the process of prepara- 
tion to receive it. The Japhetic Greeks had been 
perfecting a language and culture in their little dem- 
ocratic communities, which through foreign conquests 
by Alexander, had reached the outermost bounds of 
the civilized world. The Greek language and Greek 
culture were just the instruments needed to start the 
new life in its conquering career. 

Then, also, a little west of these Grecian republics 
on the banks of the Tiber, had been springing up 
another phase of Japhetic civilization preparatory to 
the same general purpose of receiving and giving to 
the world the fresh influx of Divine forces from the 
risen Saviour. Their exact mission seems to have 
been to bring the antagonistic nations under one 
dominion, so that the heralds of the new gospel 
might find easy access to all the world under the 
protecting aegis of the civil power. The cohorts of 
Caesar were the vanguards of the soldiers of the 
cross. 

The colossal empire of Rome having performed its 
first use of affording channels for the outflow of the 
Divine life to the nations under its dominion, and the 
new doctrine having become established among its 
subjects, the very government itself having assumed 
a protectorate over the Christian system, the time 
came for it to perform a still further mission in its 
downfall. 

The various Indo-European savage tribes that had 
been for centuries flowing westward from their Asi- 
atic homes and settling in Northern and Western 



124 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Europe, were, through the downfall of Rome, to be 
brought to a knowledge of Christianity. And thus, as 
in the case of Samson, the results of Rome's death 
were to be greater than those of her life. 

The barbarians of the North poured down upon 
Italy and gradually became imbued in some degree 
with the principles of Christianity. These principles 
have proved the good seed sown in good ground 
which has produced the fruit of all our modern Euro- 
pean civilization. The history of Europe since that 
time has been the history of the new force flowing 
from the Christ in conflict with the old, effete condi- 
tions fixed in the heart of humanity in its retrograde 
movement from the lapse of Adam to the coming of 
Christ. 

The first result of this conflict between the new 
and the old has been seeming darkness and death. 
The old civilization had to be destroyed, and the new 
to be built upon its ruins. Hence the period of dark- 
ness in modern history called the Middle Ages. 

But about one hundred years ago another crisis 
seems to have taken place in the mental status of the 
race. There seems to have been a new influx of life 
from the Divine Man similar to that at the Incarna- 
tion. It is manifest that we are in the dawn of the 
most eventful era in the world's history. Clouds of 
darkness have been lifted from the human mind, 
depressing forces have been suddenly removed, and 
Christian civilization, as though suddenly unleashed, 
has leapt forward with a great bound. Freedom and 
power in all departments of thought and activity 



LECTURE. 125 

have received a mighty impulse. Greater advance- 
ment has been made in knowledge and its application 
to human well-being in the last few decades than ever 
before in as many millenniums. Conservatism is con- 
founded at the velocity of modern movements. 

What does it all mean ? The answer to this ques- 
tion can be given only from a perception of the 
position at which we have arrived in our historical 
progress as seen in the light of the end toward 
which our development was originally designed, and 
toward which we are tending. We must also have a 
comprehension of the several stages or steps neces- 
sary to reach that end, and a knowledge of the 
ground already traversed with the characteristic of 
each age in its relations to all the others and to the 
final consummation. 

To attain this point of view has been the object in 
what has been said. From this vantage-ground let 
us look out upon the signs of the times. 

We have seen that there was, down to the Incarna- 
tion of Jesus Christ, a retrogressive development 
through three successive steps, and that since that 
period, the development under the quickening influ- 
ence of the Spirit has been ascending finally to 
culminate in an Incarnation of the Infinite in our 
race. The tabernacle of God is to be with men ; he 
is to dwell with them and they are to be his people. 
There is to be an opening out into each degree and 
a filling out of every faculty of every individual of 
our race with all the fullness of God until we shall 
stand complete in Christ as one grand unitary body. 



126 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

How far are we advanced in our upward course, 
and what is our present status ? Of the three stages 
to be traversed we have certainly passed one. We 
have laid aside the swaddling clothes of authority 
and ceremonialism and are far on our way on the 
higher plateau of rational thought and individual 
liberty. Indeed, it is evident that the vanguard are 
entering upon the third, last, and highest stage of 
which love is the life and "no death" the watch- 
word. 

To be sure, the procession is a long one from those 
in the lead to those in the rear, and it may be some 
time, perhaps centuries, before all nations and people 
shall come up. Prophetic utterances are on record, 
notably those of Christ himself, foreshadowing a long 
series of woes and calamities to intervene, ere hope 
to the whole body of humanity shall end in fruition. 
But thank God for the assurance that even death, the 
last enemy, is to be conquered, and that the time will 
be when the last prodigal shall arise and go to his 
Father. 

But even now, the rising sun gilds the mountain- 
tops upon which some of the most advanced ones 
stand. They send back the cheering words which 
pass along the line and gladden the hearts of those 
who have ears to hear, " Behold the promised 
land ! behold, the bridegroom cometh ! " 

The central truths of this new era are : God the 
all ; man his idea or reflection ; nature the symbolism 
of God in man ; and the divinizing of the whole man, 
spirit, soul, and body, in the Christ. These truths, 



LECTURE. 127 

properly apprehended, bring man into conscious 
unity with God and all humanity, delivering from the 
bondage of material sense and thereby freeing from 
all spiritual and bodily maladies, and thus constituting 
him truly a Son of God. 

Sin and sickness must vanish before these truths 
as mist and darkness before the rising sun. Evil is 
only a false consciousness in the natural mind, of 
separation from God. Disease results from a false 
sense of the objective reality of the body and of 
external nature, and the consequent belief in pains 
produced and felt from without. Destroy this falsity 
and let in the Divine, and, of course, the pain and 
disease founded on the error must cease to be. 

" As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he " ; and so 
is the universe to him. We make momentarily the 
body and the world we live in. All external things 
are to us but reflections of ourselves. The world 
gives us back what we give to it as a mirror reflects 
an image. 

To him who comes to realize with a heart convic- 
tion the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, all things 
become new ; because he himself is made over 
anew. There is fulfilled in him the language 
of Revelation, " I saw r a new heaven and a new earth ; 
the first heaven and the first earth were passed 
away." Bathed in a new light, all things take on a 
transformation. " Old things have passed away." 

Just in the degree of our acceptance and embody- 
ing in our lives the great truths that are now descend- 
ing as the New Jerusalem from God out of heaven ; 



128 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

just in the ratio in which we, as the bride, make our- 
selves ready for the descending Bridegroom, shall be 
fulfilled in us the language, " Behold, the Tabernacle 
of God is with men. And God shall wipe away all 
tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no more 
death, neither sorrow nor crying ; neither shall there 
be any more pain ; for the former things are passed 
away. And he that sat upon the throne said : 
Behold, I make all things new. I am Alpha and 
Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto 
him that is athirst of the waters of life freely." 

" Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any 
man hear my voice and open the door I will come in 
unto him and sup with him and he with me." "To 
him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my 
throne even as I also overcame and am set down with 
my Father on his throne. He that hath an ear to 
hear, let him hear." 






THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. 1 29 



XV. 

THE PROFESSOR'S ARRIVAL. 

" Oh, here you are, you dear old Professor ! I 
couldn't wait, but came to the depot to meet you." 

" And can this tall, queen-like lady be my little 
schoolgirl Mamie ? Why, bless me, how you have 
changed ! I wouldn't have recognized you. How 
rapidly you young folks do run up, to be sure." 

" Now, Professor, in any one else I should think 
this flattery. You do not take into account how many 
years it has been since you left us. 

" Come, Professor, let us take the carriage. There 
is an informal meeting of the club assembled to wel- 
come you, and they will be expecting us. You cannot 
imagine how anxiously I have been looking forward 
to this visit. I have so much to talk with you about. 
All the folks will be just delighted to see you." 

" I shall be greatly pleased," said the Professor, 
" to meet your father again and to become personally 
acquainted with the friends, Mrs. Goode and others." 

" Oh, Professor, you remember I wrote you of the 
strange facts connected with Mr. True and Mrs. 
Goode. He is an excellent gentleman, and she is 
just one of the loveliest women in the world. Well, 
the most wonderful thing happened between them 
that anybody ever heard of, and I have desired to see 



I30 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

you that I might have you explain it. They recog- 
nized each other as old acquaintances when they first 
met at our house, though neither of them had ever 
heard of the other before ; and of course they had 
never seen each other — in the ordinary way, I 
mean." 

" Indeed, that is a marvelous thing, certainly." 

" Yes, it's a long story — too long to give now, but 
as soon as opportunity offers I should like to tell you 
all about it." 

" I shall be delighted to have you do so, and will 
be very glad to throw any light upon the matter that 
I can." 

" Professor, do you believe that each man and 
woman was intended for some other, just one, of the 
opposite sex ? " 

"Why, yes, I believe in counterpartal relations. 
I have no doubt that before birth all are twin souls 
in God, and that they eventually will be reunited." 

" Oh, you do ! And do you think that we can 
know our other half here ? And should we refuse to 
marry any other ? " 

" The difficulty is that from the standpoint of sense 
we can have no certain knowledge as to who is our 
counterpart." 

" Well, anyhow, there is no trouble on that score 
with Mr. True and Mrs. Goode, — but here we are at 
home. We will finish this talk some other time. 
Here, papa, is the Professor. Introduce him to 
everybody." 

In the course of the evening the conversation 



THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. I3I 

having turned upon the historical lecture, Mrs. Goode 
remarked, " There is one thing, Professor, in your 
teaching which, as I understand you, seems to be out 
of harmony with your other ideas. I have reference 
to what you call man's retrogressive development. Is 
it not a backward step in man's evolution ? " 

" Not at all. There is not, nor ever can be, any 
backward step in the unfoldment of the Infinite in 
phenomenal manifestation. From the first expres- 
sion of that unfoldment exfigured in the gaseous state 
of the geologist, or the ' darkness upon the face of 
the abyss ' of Genesis, on up to the outbirthing of 
man as an individual, and thence onward to his 
crowning estate as a son of God in Christ, there is a 
continuous, uninterrupted advance." 

" Pardon my dullness," replied Mrs. Goode, "but 
I don't grasp your thought." 

" I will try to make my idea plain," continued the 
Professor. " In general, the process is a subjective 
involution, manifesting itself in a phenomenal evolu- 
tion. The six days of creation are the involution of 
the whole of our complex humanity up to the point 
of individualization, where man stepped forth from 
the womb of the world soul as a germinal-animal- 
man. 

"The first unfoldment of the race as individuals was 
up to the point of natural rationality ; thence followed 
the lifting up of the race into conscious unity with 
God, called paradise, and succeeding this came the 
involution of a natural-religious, individual selfhood 
extending from Adam down to the Christ. This con- 



132 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

stitutes the retrogressive development of which you 
speak. It was, however, only a part of the onward 
move. Following Christ, next came individual sanc- 
tification, through the Church; that is, the religious 
sanctification of the natural selfhood. This process 
is now complete. We have come to the last step — 
that in which the natural selfhood is to be replaced 
by the Divine, and the race enter into a consciousness 
of oneness in Christ, and of union with God. You 
can see that the human selfhood, and therefore our 
race history, commenced with Adam, and hence the 
planetary orbit in its elliptical form accords with the 
movement within this period. 

"We might illustrate the race unfoldment in the 
form of a tree. The several days of creation as 
given in the Mosaic cosmogony would be represented 
by the several roots of the tree, proceeding from a 
central point, viz. : the chaos of Genesis, or the 
"nebuala" of geology. These six days are the ex- 
pression in external phenomena of the subjective 
involution of the race towards individualization. The 
seventh day, or the day of rest, would be represented 
by the body of the tree, indicating the close of that 
period, in which it is said man was made in the 
image of God, created male and female, and ordered 
to multiply and replenish the earth. Thence the 
paradisiacal state, the descent to the Christ, the 
Divine Incarnation, and the subsequent resultant 
evolution of the race to conscious unity with God 
would be indicated by successive limbs and branch- 
ings of the tree. 



THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. 1 33 

"As he first appeared, man was only germinally 
human. He was an animal to all intents and pur- 
poses, but capacitated to become man. The next 
step in his upward progress was that of laying aside 
mere animal conditions, and opening out into ratio- 
nality. At this point commenced the Adamic period. 
Here the religious faculties were opened, and through 
an influx of the spirit a natural religious selfhood was 
established in every degree of his nature. This stage 
ended at the coming of the Son of Man. 

" Since that time up to the present date, the Divine 
Spirit, outflowing through the Divine Natural Human- 
ity of the risen Redeemer, has been so appropriated 
by the individual, and interpreted as to sanctify the 
natural selfhood, thus separating one man from an- 
other, resulting in the division of the race into saints 
and sinners. In other words, it has resulted in 
Phariseeism, the I-am-holier-than-thou idea. The end 
of this process has come. Every advance of our civ- 
ilization under the inspiration of this ecclesiastical, 
religious spirit has resulted in a wider separation 
between men, an increased antagonism, a fiercer 
competition, which must ere long end in a social dis- 
ruption and anarchy. We have come to the point 
where it is manifest, even to the dullest compre- 
hension, that this way leads to death instead of to 
life. Everywhere men are earnestly seeking a solu- 
tion of the social problems that are pressing upon us. 

" The light has arisen. It is beginning to be seen 
that the natural selfhood must be utterly abolished 
and replaced by a Divine selfhood wherein the race 



134 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

is realized to be a unity in the Christ, and that, spir- 
itually there is no separation from the Divine. In 
other words, it is beginning to be seen that there is a 
perfect identity of life and interest in humanity, and 
in the degree in which we develop into a practical 
application of this idea will all our antagonisms and 
evils pass away." 

"Why was it necessary that the race should es- 
tablish a religious natural selfhood?" inquired Mr. 
True. 

" It was merely a continuing and perfecting of the 
process of individualization. The natural mind has 
its three degrees corresponding to the spiritual. It 
was necessary that these should be filled out fully in 
order that in them as a matrix the Divine might be 
born and mature into manhood in the natural con- 
sciousness. The completion of this work was the 
fullness of time when the Representative and Head 
of the race took his place therein by birth, assuming 
to himself our prepared humanity and filling it out in 
all its departments with the Divine. Thus he became 
First and Last, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning 
and the End, the Almighty in this natural degree." 

" Last Sunday," remarked Judge Wise, " I heard, 
in a sermon, an attempt at another explanation of the 
reason for the birth of Christ, just at the time in 
which he came. 

"The preacher told us that the time, conditions, 
and place of Jesus' birth were in the Infinite plan 
arranged so as in the most perfect manner possible to 
furnish evidence to all men at all times of the fact of 



THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. 1 35 

his Incarnation. The peoples preceding this event 
were inspired to look forward to it in faith, and 
prophets were raised to make predictions concerning 
it. The fulfillment of these prophecies by Jesus 
Christ, together with his miracles, demonstrated it as 
a fact to all after generations. 

u We were told that the object in the deferring of 
his coming was that the event might be brought 
down to a period within such historical limits as to 
render the historic data with reference to it more 
accessible." 

"It is really astonishing," said Dr. Manuel, "what 
shallow sophistries sensible men will impose upon 
themselves and try to palm off upon others. It 
would seem that a child ought to know that historical 
evidence of whatever kind, whether based upon the 
testimony of personal witnesses in regard to miracles 
or upon prophecies, has ceased to have any weight in 
the way of establishing spiritual truth. In the pres- 
ent attitude of the human mind a revelation must 
carry its credentials in itself, in its own inherent 
rationality and power. 

"Besides, if such avouchment as your preacher 
avers to have been necessary, had been the real de- 
sign of Infinite Wisdom in selecting the time and 
place of the birth of the Son of Man, why was ob- 
scure Judea chosen as the theatre of that event, and 
a few fishermen as its historians and witnesses ? 
Why was not Rome selected ? That city was then 
the center of the enlightened world. There, it would 
have been easy to have had performed in the pres- 



I36 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

ence of the world's concentrated learning, wonders of 
such a character and under such conditions as ever 
after to have set the question at rest. Whereas skep- 
tics are now enabled very plausibly to argue even 
against the fact that such a man as Jesus ever lived." 

"Come," said Mrs. Priest, "let us for a little while 
emerge from these philosophic and historic deeps 
and rest upon the surface of things. I have been 
very anxious, Professor, to know you. I am sure it 
would make you blush to hear the praises bestowed 
upon you by your enthusiastic pupil. I have had 
some curiosity to see what manner of man you could 
be to excite such boundless admiration for your 
wisdom." 

" Whatever opinion you may get of the Professor," 
interposed Miss Wise, "he will not be long in getting 
a correct opinion of you, unless he has lost his phren- 
ological and psychological powers since I had the 
pleasure of attending upon his teaching. Bishop's 
thought reading was not a circumstance compared to 
his power of entering into the thoughts and pene- 
trating the motives of us girls at school. If he had 
been less kind — " 

" Now, my dear," exclaimed the Professor, "please 
spare me. You will give these good people the im- 
pression that your old teacher is a sort of gorgon- 
eyed critic, searching out everybody's secret thoughts 
and piercing them through with deadly intent." 

"Are you a phrenologist, Professor?" inquired 
Mrs. Goode. 

"I suppose I may answer yes," responded the 
Professor; "that is, theoretically." 



THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. 137 

" Have you found phrenology reliable, and are you 
thoroughly convinced from your investigations, of its 
truth ? " asked Judge Wise. 

. " The fundamental fact that the brain is the organ 
of the mind, and that form indicates function, are 
undoubtedly true," responded the Professor; "and it 
must of course be reliable as far as the correct rela- 
tions of brain form and mind function have been 
ascertained by observation. 

" The body in all and in particular is the outbirth 
of the natural mind that organizes it. The brain is 
the direct organ of the mind, and the body takes 
form from the quality of the man as manifested in 
the brain. The brain, so to speak, contains all the 
principles of which the body constitutes the principi- 
ates or extensions. It follows that the form of the 
brain must represent the character of the natural 
man." 

" But does not this lead to fatalism ? " asked Mr. 
Priest. 

"This should not be an objection with you, Doctor," 
answered the Professor. " It cannot be more fatal- 
istic than your theology. But whether it does or not, 
as a matter of fact I know it to be true, that the form 
of the body corresponds to that of the brain and that 
the whole external organism reveals to the practiced 
eye the character of the man. 

"To illustrate by an extreme type, take a man whose 
head is low, oval at the base, rising up perpendicu- 
larly all round, broad at the front, and flat at the cen- 
ter. Such a man will be short in stature, have large 



I38 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

lower limbs and abdomen, narrow shoulders, pudgy 
cheeks, whitish complexion, pug nose, thick lips, and 
small eyes. I leave you to label him. He is a sort 
of pig walking on its hind legs. And such a head is 
invariably accompanied by such a body. 

" Take again, a head long from brow to crown and 
from back to front, pointed at the center back head and 
between the temples, rapidly retreating from the brow 
backward, and culminating in a sugar-loaf shape at 
the crown. Such a man will be quite tall, bony, and 
muscular, have a Roman nose, thin lips, and promi- 
nent cheek bones. His gait will be long and swing- 
ing, his mind will be slow and cautious in its move- 
ments, conservative and tenacious. He will be 
sincere and reliable as a friend and unrelenting as an 
enemy. These have been named respectively the 
lymphatic and bilious temperaments. 

" There is another type equally marked, termed the 
sanguine, which I need not here describe. Each type 
has its own character, and is liable to diseases pecul- 
iar to itself. All men are made up of modifications 
of the three types in endless variety. Any observant 
physician will verify these statements." 

" But you do not regard the bodily machinery as 
self-operative ? " queried Judge Wise. " I would like 
to ask your opinion as to how the machinery is con- 
nected with the man that runs it." 

" To give my idea fully would require our going 
more deeply into the inquiry of what man is and of 
his relation to God than we have time to do now. I 
will only say here that all life is spirit, and that the 






THE PROFESSORS ARRIVAL. 1 39 

law of life-manifestation is by efflux from spirit out- 
ward. In fact, the body in the last analysis is only 
the outbirth of mind, that is, mind expressing itself 
so and so. It is but a phenomenon or shadow whose 
substance is mind. What is called the matter of the 
body is ever changing. Water flowing over a rock 
in a shallow stream affords an illustration. The 
water takes the shape of the obstruction merely at 
the moment of its passage, its form and gurgling 
indicating the presence of the rock. So the matter 
of the body is in a constant state of change, momen- 
tarily exfiguring spirit. 

" The wonderful character of the brain as the organ 
of the mind is shown in that, as physiologists tell us, 
there are to every square inch of surface one hundred 
millions of fibers capable of receiving impressions. 
These fibers transmit their impressions to the general 
sensorium of the brain, whence they are sent to all 
parts of the body along the nerves much as messages 
are transmitted over the wires from a telegraph sta- 
tion. Thus the machinery is moved. The brain is 
to the body what the sun is to the earth." 

" Then the body is a thing separate from the mind 
that controls it ? " suggested Mr. Priest. 

" No, the body is the mind, the man himself, phe- 
nomenally manifesting himself. The brain fibers, the 
nerves, the physical organs, are but projections of the 
mind outward. They are the mind's operations made 
visible to sense. The idea of a duality of soul and 
body, that is, two distinct identities associated together, 
is a fallacy resulting from and concomitant with ma- 



I4O THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

terialism and which the philosophy of the incoming 
age will correct. 

" It will come to be seen that all science is but a 
knowledge of the phenomenal manifestations of 
mind or spirit, or in other words, of spirit seeing, 
feeling, thinking, and acting so and so. Facts, with 
the law of their occurrence and the action of physi- 
cal forces, will take on a new meaning, and will be 
studied with an interest superadded by reason of their 
perceived relation to spirit. The mind's action and 
character will be known by the bodily phenomena. 
Physiology and psychology will be one. All nature 
will speak of a super nature or life forces ; books 
will be seen in running brooks, sermons in stones, and 
God in everything. 

" Then, too, a very important result will follow as to 
health and disease. If the mind is really the all, and 
the body is the projected thought, it follows that dis- 
ease must be abnormal thought and its cure must lie 
in correcting that thought. 

" At the first flush of this new truth, it is not marvel- 
ous that some who see the reality of spirit and the 
subjective unreality of matter, and yet who have no 
philosophy by which to understand the relations of 
spirit to phenomena, should utterly ignore the latter, 
even as a fact of consciousness, and should hold to 
seeming absurdities. However, if we are to continue 
our investigations in the line of my letters, all this 
will come up again in a connection in which it will 
be more readily comprehended." 

" In a metaphysical lecture a few days ago," said 



THE PROFESSOR S ARRIVAL. 141 

Miss Wise, " a teacher denied that the brain sub- 
stance had any more relation than the foot to mental 
function." 

" Such vagaries need no reply," responded the 
Professor. " They may be left to correct themselves 
with people of intelligence. And with those who do 
not think, no argument would be of any avail. Preju- 
dice is impervious to reason." 

" Professor," said Judge Wise, " I suppose I might 
be considered as a sort of unprejudiced observer as 
to the matters you have been discussing in your let- 
ters. I am not yet prepared to indorse in full either 
your method or your conclusions, but I must say that 
I applaud you for your independence in striking off 
the trammels of creeds and thinking for yourself, and 
for your efforts to solve the mysteries that have been 
thrown around these great questions by those whose 
business it should be to elucidate them." 

"I suppose, Judge, you have reference to the 
Church," interposed Mr. Priest. " Do you mean that 
she has purposely shrouded the subjects of which 
you speak in mystery ? " 

" Not exactly that," responded the Judge. " Let 
me explain. As to theological thought, the preach- 
ers are, in the main, the Church. They seem to me 
to be afraid of independent thought. They crystal- 
lize the thought of some leader into a sect, build up a 
high wall around their organization, and then proceed 
to pitch-fork every one who dares even to peer above 
the wall. 

" There are certain problems whose solution the age 



142 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

imperatively demands of the Church, but under cleri- 
cal dominance there is not afforded the necessary 
freedom inside the so-called orthodox church for this 
work to be accomplished." 

" Now, Judge," remarked Mrs. Priest, " I do hope 
you and my husband will not get into a theological 
controversy." 

"The point made by the Judge," said Mr. True, 
" is a good one ; and I hope the matter may not rest 
here. We are, in this club at least, supposed to be 
free, and I for one should be glad if Judge Wise 
would favor us with a statement in writing, from his 
standpoint, of some of the difficulties to which he 
refers." 

"Excuse me," replied the Judge; "I wish only to 
be a listener, and such a proceeding as you suggest 
would be especially untimely under the circumstances. 
Professor Fontaine is here as our guest and teacher. 
Our time now should be devoted to listening to him." 

"Allow me to say a word," remarked the Profes- 
sor. " I ask as a special favor that Judge Wise shall 
comply with Mr. True's suggestion. It not only 
will not interfere with what I have to say, but I have 
no doubt will be an aid to our future investigations." 

" Let us put the vote," exclaimed Mr. True. "All 
in favor of Judge Wise, at our next meeting, giving 
us an essay upon the subject in question, will say 
'Aye.' It is a vote. The Judge will take due 
notice and govern himself accordingly. 

" One week from to-day the club will meet to hear 
him." 



JUDGE WISE S ESSAY. I43 



XVI. 

JUDGE WISE'S ESSAY. 

" As I understand the nature of the task assigned 
me, it is to give a statement of questions to be solved 
or of the obstacles to be removed by Christianity in 
order that its claims to be a Divine Revelation can 
be rationally accepted. 

" I am not to discuss any point nor to give my own 
opinion except in so far as such discussion or opinion 
is involved in the mere statement. And even in this 
respect, I shall make no attempt at being exhaustive, 
but shall treat the matter cursorily. 

" I should say further that my statement has regard 
to problems as they exist in the minds of the general 
public, and not as they stand related to us who have 
already had some of them under discussion. To 
commence at the beginning, a whole series of diffi- 
culties confront the ordinary reader in the very first 
chapter of the Biblical record. 

"i. The account there given is that God created all 
things, including the sun, moon, and our own planet 
with its inhabitants, in six days ; whereas, to say noth- 
ing of the rest of the universe, science teaches us 
indubitably that our little earth alone has been grad- 
ually developing for untold ages. 

" 2. Light is said to have been created and divided 



144 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

from the darkness and thus the phenomena of day 
and night set up, three days before the sun and moon 
were created. 

" 3. There are two accounts of creation which are, 
or seem to be, inconsistent with each other. 

" In the first, man was created and ordered to mul- 
tiply and replenish the earth. In the second, a man 
only was created at first, and afterward a woman was 
constructed from a rib taken from the man, and the 
two were not ordered to multiply and replenish the 
earth. In fact, the circumstances attending man's 
fall seem to indicate that this was the very thing they 
were commanded not to do. Their shame, their 
clothing themselves with fig-leaves, their having no 
children until after the fall, the evil character of their 
first-born, etc., point to the procreation of their 
species as somehow being involved in, if not constitut- 
ing, the very gravamen of their transgression. And 
again, the fact of Cain's going out, after having killed 
his brother Abel, to another land and taking unto 
himself a wife, implies that there were others than 
this Adamic pair in existence. 

" 4. In the first account, all is said to be good. This 
' all ' must have reference to the whole universe, be- 
cause the account of creation includes not only our 
planet, but the universe of worlds. But in the second 
account, we have evil existing in the form of a talk- 
ing serpent sufficiently intelligent to seduce the 
woman, and through her to drag the pair into diso- 
bedience and disbelief. The question arises in view 
of these statements, How could all creation be pro- 
nounced good ? 



JUDGE WISE S ESSAY. 145 

" 5. Coming down to the Noachian flood, there are 
seeming impossibilities in the record. For instance, 
it would have been impossible to crowd into the ark 
the number of animals that Noah is said to have 
taken aboard. And granting this to have been ac- 
complished, shut up as they are represented to have 
been, all must have perished in a very few hours for 
want of air. 

"6. God is said to have repented that he made man. 
Again, he is represented to have been angry and jeal- 
ous, to have ordered the Israelites to slay without 
mercy whole nations, not sparing even women and 
children. Saul was dethroned for endeavoring to 
evade this cruel command ; and David was a man 
after God's own heart, notwithstanding the most dire- 
ful cruelties. Samuel, the prophet of Jehovah, hews 
to pieces the defenceless Agag, visiting upon Saul a 
curse for mercifully sparing him, while it was all 
right for the bloody David to slip out secretly from 
the eyes of his protectors in Philistia and with a 
marauding band slaughter a whole village of peaceful 
people, and then on his return tell a falsehood about 
it. Surely such statements need explanation. As they 
stand to the ordinary reader, they seem inconsistent 
with the character of a God worthy our respect. 

" 7. Science and the Biblical record seem to be in 
conflict as to man's history. The former evinces by 
indubitable facts that man started on his career on 
the earth at the lowest possible degree of the scale, 
and has gradually developed upward, through succes- 
sive steps or advances, called, respectively, the stone 



146 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



age, the iron age, etc., to his present position ; whilst 
the latter starts him in a state of perfection from 
which he lapsed into ignorance, evil, and savagery. 
How shall such contradictions be reconciled ? Are 
both accounts true ? If so, how ? 

" 8. Again, the chronology of the Bible and histor- 
ical fact are at variance. The Bible, according to the 
received chronology, tells us that 2344 years before 
the Christian era there were only eight people on the 
globe, the rest having been swept off by a flood; 
whereas Archaeological facts, combined with other 
positive testimony, indicate that 2500 years at least 
before Christ, there was a teeming civilization in 
Egypt and Chaldea, and probably in India. So far 
as I know, this fact is now undoubted by any his- 
torian, It surely behooves Bible expounders to rec- 
oncile these conflicting teachings. 

" 9. We now come to the doctrines that theologians 
have drawn from these records. 

" To begin at the beginning, let us consider the so- 
called ' Fall of Man.' An innocent and altogether 
inexperienced pair, a man and a woman, are placed 
in a garden of delight. An arbitrary command is 
laid upon them, and a terrible judgment threatened 
upon its violation. By some means, presumably by 
the agency of him who gave the pair their abode — ■ 
certainly with his connivance — a peculiarly alluring 
temptation was brought to bear upon the weaker of 
the two. She forgot herself and yielded. The hus- 
band, man-like, was over-persuaded by the wife. 

" It looks much as though the whole matter had been 



JUDGE WISE S ESSAY. I47 

arranged purposely to entrap them. Certainly that 
would be the verdict upon any human procedure of 
like kind. An earthly father, treating his innocent 
children after the manner in which Jehovah is repre- 
sented as dealing with the • unsophisticated pair of 
Eden, would be visited by all just minds with unspar- 
ing obloquy. But the offense against our sense of 
right takes on an inconceivable enormity when we 
consider the penalty visited as. the result of their dis- 
obedience. Not only are the two immediately con- 
cerned driven out from their pleasant home, to drag 
out a miserable suffering life, ending in death, but 
the same doom descends upon the untold millions of 
their posterity, misery and want and woe being their 
sad inheritance through the long, dreary ages. 

" Can any sane mind really believe this ? 

" Now let us look at the means devised for the 
deliverance of humanity from the awful curse resting 
upon it. This is found in what has been termed the 
doctrine of the atonement — a scheme or plan lauded 
by theologians as being an infinitely wonderful dis- 
play of Divine magnanimity and love. 

" In general, this scheme consists in the substitution 
of a victim to suffer in man's stead. We are taught 
that in God himself lay the chief obstacle in the way 
of man's salvation, and to clear away which an infinity 
of suffering had to be endured by some one (no mat- 
ter by whom) — that, in fact, God was angry, and had 
to be placated by suffering — that there is an element 
in the Divine nature which was so aroused to wrath 
by the sin of his own abject and helpless creature, 



I48 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

that it demanded to be appeased by man's endless 
torture ; and that only one of two ways offered itself 
for the satisfaction of this attribute misnamed justice, 
viz. ; either by the reduction of the sinning creatures 
themselves to endless and unimaginable misery, or 
by the substitution in their stead of an exalted and 
exquisitely innocent victim, whose pangs, compensat- 
ing what they lacked in volume by their intensity, 
and the value derived from the superiority of their 
subject, would lend the same degree of satisfaction or 
gratification to him who demanded this sacrifice as 
the endless sufferings of the sinner. The innocent 
substitute being found or provided, the sword of 
Almighty vengeance was sheathed in him, and man, 
the guilty one, goes free. 

" Is this the truth, and does it commend itself to 
rational thought ? If not, then does not our doctrine 
of the Atonement need a new statement ? 

" Next, let us take up the question of the endless 
suffering of most of our race. The reconcilement of 
this idea with justice and love forces itself upon our 
consideration. It will not down at our bidding. Let 
us look at the matter squarely. The present popula- 
tion of the earth is about 1,400,000,000. Including 
the population of the Greek, the Roman Catholic, and 
the Protestant churches, only about one-fourth of 
earth's inhabitants are Christians even nominally. 
Now making the largest allowance, not more than 
one-tenth of the people in Christian countries are, 
from the ordinary church view, possessed of a saving 
faith in Christ. That is to say, of all earth's millions, 



JUDGE WISE S ESSAY. I49 

only one-tenth of one-fourth, or one-fortieth, are in a 
saved state. This would give us a population equal 
to that of France. The rest, that is, thirteen hundred 
and sixty-five millions (thirty-nine out of every forty 
of earth's inhabitants), if swept off would be plunged 
into an abyss of endless darkness and death. And 
no period of history in the past affords a better out- 
look than that of this age. On the contrary, the 
condition of humanity has been generally much worse. 

" But taking our age to be merely an average, think 
of it ! Since the creation of man, only one out of 
every forty saved ! Only a rivulet as compared with 
the great river that has flowed over into hell to feed 
the insatiable maw of an endless death. 

" Now, dating from the earliest age of possible 
accountability to the close of the average life, we 
have only about twenty years. Within this short 
period the decision must be made upon which such 
momentous issues hang. Henceforth the doom is 
sealed. No matter from what cause the unsaved 
may have failed to perceive and to receive life in the 
Christ, whether from lack of light, wilful blindness, 
or love of self and the world, the final result is the 
same. 

" Over the entrance to their drear abode is written, 
' Leave hope behind, ye who enter here.' So we 
have been taught by our mediaeval theology ; and so 
mild, soft-spoken, easy-mannered theologians contend 
for, to-day, with a zeal worthy of a better cause. 

" It is a matter of surprise to see what unsparing 
condemnation is meted out to those who dare express 



150 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



a hope, — not with the Poet Laureate that in some far- 
off time good may fall to all, — but the much milder 
conjectural wish and belief that all such as have not 
had an opportunity to know the Christ, or in other 
words, those who have not had a fair chance here, 
may have their day of probation extended beyond 
the horizon of this natural life. 

" One is reminded of the pious old lady who 
remarked, ' Yes, there are some who expect that hell 
will sometime cease; but I am of those who hope for 
better things.' 

" The questions of course come up, ' Are these the 
teachings of the Bible ? and granting their truth, who 
is responsible for this dreadful state of affairs ? Is 
God ? If so, where is his love ? Is man or any 
other creature ? Then where are God's Wisdom and 
Power ? ' Let us look at both sides. 

" Reason seems to demand that in any absolute 
sense there can be no contingencies in a universe 
created and ruled by Infinite Love, Wisdom, and 
Power; and that upon the Creator must devolve the 
final outcome of a beneficent result. In no conceiv- 
able way can we imagine this responsibility to be 
shifted upon another. Of course the Almighty had 
a design in calling into being not only the world of 
our humanity in general, but each individual in par- 
ticular. Now all that man is, or can be, including 
his freedom of choice or free agency by which the 
choice is made of good or evil, is a momentarily cre- 
ated gift. The faculty of freedom, no less than that 
of other powers, is the means by which the end of 
his being is attained. 



JUDGE WISES ESSAY. 151 

" But if through the exercise of this very faculty the 
Infinite design can be and has been thwarted by the 
creature, whether by man or devil, then what becomes 
of God's Infinitude ? 

"The very idea of God is that of absolute perfection. 
Our hearts teach us that God is Infinite in Love — 
that is, his love for his creatures is wholly untainted 
by any regard for himself. Our intelligence teaches 
us that he is absolute Wisdom — that is, his ability 
to carry out his designs of love is fully equal to his 
disposition. Wisdom and power are able to achieve 
whatever love may seek or desire. Now any doctrine 
of creation, or the results of creation, that implies or 
affirms a failure or permanent imperfection in the 
final outcome, would thereby stamp itself untrue. 

"Let us illustrate. I do that which is an injury to 
my fellow-man. This marks my character as evil. 
Again, I make a statue. The work is a failure. 
This marks my want of genius to conceive, my in- 
ability to execute, or some obduracy in the material. 
But none of these difficulties lie in the way in the 
case of creation. The material out of which we are 
constructed proceeds from God. Whatever powers 
or attributes the creature possesses is a gift from the 
same Infinite source. Hence, any failure to achieve 
his original design must arise from some defect in 
himself. But the very idea of God, as we have said, 
is perfection. The conception of a failure, therefore, 
is unthinkable. 

" It follows that all man's experiences, of whatever 
kind, must be a means subsidiary to the working out 



I $2 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

of the prime end of his being. All suffering on earth 
or in hell must be included in the original design and 
must have been a part of the plan. 

" But is not such a conclusion inconsistent with love ? 
Both reason and the Scriptures assure us that our 
Heavenly Father is not pleased to have us suffer, 
and that he wills our salvation and happiness. The 
Christ was the character of God manifested to our 
finite apprehension. His spirit was pure, disinter- 
ested love. He had no private ends to subserve. 
We must conclude, on this ground, that God is not 
the willing author of man's damnation. We must con- 
clude that the evils and horrors of hell, to say noth- 
ing of the sufferings on earth, form no part of his 
original designs, but were somehow injected into cre- 
ation contrary to the Divine purpose ; and that his 
design in the creation of the lost has been thwarted. 
We must assume that God originally intended to cre- 
ate a heaven of angels, but in reality has succeeded 
mainly in creating a hell of devils. 

"The question arises, Did he know what the result 
would be from the beginning ? If he did know, the 
statement then would stand thus : God intended and 
attempted to do a thing which he knew from the 
beginning would be a failure ; and he is thwarted 
by the creature to whom he momentarily gives life, in 
the exercise of the very powers which he momentarily 
bestows, for a purpose which he knows will not be 
accomplished. And yet all the responsibility of the 
failure rests ttpon the creature. Surely absurdity can 
no further go. 



JUDGE WISES ESSAY. 1 53 

" Let us put our dilemma into the form of syllogism. 
The proposition that most men land in an endless 
hell constitutes our major premise. That such re- 
sult follows because God wills it, or because of his 
inability to prevent it, is the minor premise. 

" But if he willed the eternal damnation of his 
creatures, he cannot be Love. And if he willed their 
salvation and failed to achieve it, then he cannot be 
absolute Wisdom and Power. This is the legitimate 
conclusion. God is not absolute ; he is not perfect ; 
he is not God. The devil has circumvented him or 
he has himself the prime attribute of a devil. Take 
either horn of the dilemma and the reverent mind is 
shocked. 

" Then to cap the climax of absurdity, we are taught 
that when, in the course of ages, the whole race, the 
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, were 
in a state of vassalage under Satan, the Infinite 
Creator, by an inconceivable sacrifice, made the effort 
to recapture his lost dominion, but again failed of 
his purpose. If such an effort was made and for 
such an object, it was manifestly a failure, for as we 
have seen now after nearly nineteen hundred years 
have elapsed, thirty-nine out of every forty of our 
humanity belong to the dominion of Satan. 

" This brings us to still another problem that must 
be solved, viz. : the origin and use of this Titanic 
embodiment of malignity so colossal that Almighti- 
ness itself is no . match for him. Who is he ? Why 
is he here ? What is to be the final outcome of his 
operations in this world ? 



154 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



" It will not do for Christians, by the ordinary laws 
of interpretation, to deny or try to explain away his 
existence. 

" The being of God could be eliminated from the 
Bible on the same principle. 

" But to return to our syllogism. An effort has 
been made to find a way out of the labyrinth of logi- 
cal absurdities by denying the major premise, viz. : 
that hell is endless. As an embodied evil state, 
resulting in suffering, that it exists, no rational mind 
can doubt. Its presence and power are manifest in 
every man we meet who is fixed in evil. But is it 
endless ? How shall we account for the existence at 
all of evil in the province of Infinite Love, Wisdom, 
and Power. Is this not, after all, the point of the 
problem ? Or assuming its existence, and supposing 
man, by the choice and practice of falsity and evil, to 
have become an organized form of hell, so that his 
spiritual state, as we are taught it will become, is but 
a nidus breeding the undying worm of falsity and 
flaming up in unquenchable fires of lust, how, after 
he has passed to the other life, shall he be delivered 
from this infernalized condition ? In that world we 
may assume that like gravitates to like. The common 
mind in hell is a congeries of falsities with their con- 
sorted malignities. How shall truth reach the 
inhabitants ? How shall they be reclaimed ? Echo 
answers how ? 

" Some theologians attempt to relieve the mental 
nightmare of the situation by assuming that for those 
who have had no opportunity to know the truth here, 



JUDGE WISES ESSAY. 1 55 

there is a special dispensation in the way of a second 
probation in the other life. Granting this, an endless 
hell still remains for the rest of the lost. In their 
case, at least, if God is love, the Divine purpose 
must be defeated. 

" Others again have assumed annihilation to be the 
end of the unsaved. This represents the Creator as 
either failing to effect his purpose in bringing them 
into existence, or of mocking them. Thus, he creates 
a being and endows him with the capacity of receiv- 
ing eternal life. He means to save the man or he 
does not mean it. If he means to do so, but annihi- 
lation is the result, then his purpose has been thwarted. 
If, on the other hand, God did not mean to save him 
and knew he could not be saved, he is chargeable 
with folly. Again, we end in a reductio ad absur- 
ditm. 

" We might enumerate social questions also which 
Christianity must meet and settle or fall. But this 
will suffice for the present object. 

" There must be such a solution of these problems 
as to clear away all inconsistencies. Upon the 
Divine Sun of God's perfection there must not be a 
single spot. There must be no defect, no marplots 
in the outcome of God's work. There must be no 
power frustrating his design. The final result must 
be seen to perfectly accord with absolute Love, Wis- 
dom, and Power. If there be suffering here or here- 
after ; if there be domination of evil ; they must be 
shown to exist with reference to a good sufficiently 
great to justify this means of attaining it. If there 



I56 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

be present defects of any kind whatsoever, they must 
avouch themselves to be necessary factors working 
toward perfection. 

" Let me add in conclusion that so far as my knowl- 
edge goes, our friend, Professor Fontaine, is the first 
to lay a foundation broad enough and deep enough 
upon which to construct a theory that will fairly and 
squarely and comprehensively solve these problems 
of the ages. This he has done in his proposed an- 
swer to the fundamental query, What is our use as a 
race, in the universal economy ? 

" How far he may succeed in erecting a superstruc- 
ture at once rational, consistent, and conclusive, we 
must each determine for himself, when we shall have 
the privilege of contemplating the completed build- 
ing. But so much we may now say, that whensoever 
and by whomsoever that structure shall be reared, it 
must be upon the answer to the basic question pro- 
posed by him." 

At the conclusion of Judge Wise's address, a pro- 
found silence ensued for several minutes, which was 
at length broken by Mr. True, who remarked, 
" Judge, your paper almost takes the form of an in- 
dictment against Christianity." 

" I certainly do not so mean it," replied the Judge. 
" I have endeavored to make a fair statement of 
Christianity as generally taught. If I have not 
done so, then I am open to conviction and cor- 
rection." 

" Your essay," said Mr. Priest, "is just such an one 
as might have been expected to emanate from the 



JUDGE WISES ESSAY. I 57 

skeptic's standpoint, but not from that of the Chris- 
tian. It would seem as though you had read and 
thought only on one side. These objections have 
been repeatedly answered." 

"Allow me to express my thanks for your very 
able presentation of matters just as they really are," 
quickly spoke Mrs. Goode. " It is high time we 
had ceased blinding ourselves by foolish partisan 
prejudice." 

"Thanks," replied the Judge ; "I have no reason 
to be prejudiced, and do not think I am. I have read 
the ablest works of Christian writers on these very 
points, and I must say that I have found them to 
myself in the highest degree unsatisfactory — even 
positively lame. 

" Let me ask you, Dr. Priest, what would be 
your opinion of a story such as that of a woman's 
being built out of a rib taken from a man, or that of 
a serpent's talking and tempting a human being, if 
related anywhere else than in the Bible ? Would any 
possible explanation be satisfactory to you which was 
based on the idea of these being literal occurrences?" 

" I must frankly reply that I would regard them as 
mythical," replied Mr. Priest, " but with the Biblical 
record it is different. We have evidences that to the 
reverent mind are perfectly convincing of the truth 
of the Scriptures. Hence, such things as we may 
not be able to understand or which may even appear 
as irrational we accept on faith. 

"To illustrate, the Christian believes with a pro- 
found conviction, based on personal experience, that 



158 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Jesus Christ was all that the New Testament writers 
claim for him. It follows that his indorsement of any- 
book or writing as the truth is to such believers the 
end of controversy. But Christ did so indorse the 
Old Testament Scriptures and notably by name 
the books of Moses, against which the indictments to 
which we have been listening are laid. 

"What shall we do then? We must conclude either 
that the accounts therein given, whatever they may 
be, are somehow true, though we may not be able to 
explain some apparent inconsistencies, or that Jesus 
was mistaken, and hence was not the Messiah. 

" I think that the chief fault with objectors lies in 
this, that they seek with the eye of mere natural 
reason to penetrate into things which can alone be 
spiritually discerned. If they would apply the test 
given by Christ, their difficulties would, ere long, 
vanish. That test was, ' Follow me, and ye shall 
know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' They 
make their reason, instead of obedience, the test." 

"Your special pleading," replied the Judge, "is to 
my mind only an illustration of the controlling power 
of the religious element in man. Notwithstanding 
the glaring inconsistencies, the discrepancies and the 
irrationalities of Bible teaching as interpreted by 
theologians, yet the wisest and best men of earth 
have been held to it as the needle to the pole. This 
to me simply proves that the religious sentiment in 
them was supreme. Having accepted certain dogmas 
and incorporated them into their religious life, they 
henceforth were held by them as in a vise. If they 



JUDGE WISES ESSAY. I 59 

had similarly accepted Mohammedanism, or Bud- 
dhism, or even Mormonism, they would have held to 
it and defended it just as tenaciously. 

" Witness Jonathan Edwards, the most acute 
thinker on metaphysical subjects that America has 
produced, calmly contemplating and delineating in a 
sermon the following scene : A mother is lifting up 
her eyes and heart in rapturous praise of God's jus- 
tice in the damnation of her little child, which in 
impotent fury is spitting out the venom of its infan- 
tile depravity as it passes to its deserved abode of 
endless fires. Is that rational ? To us, in this day, 
it is unthinkable. Our most charitable construction 
of the matter is that the author was a logical lunatic. 
And yet the data from which he drew his conclusions 
are embalmed in the creeds of a large portion of the 
Church to-day. It was in Jonathan Edwards' day the 
common orthodox belief. 

"The history of the world proves that religious 
sentiment is not a safe guide to truth, and that 
strength of intellect under the dominance of the 
religious feelings only serves to confirm and perpet- 
uate falsities however dire, when once formulated 
and accepted as truth. False religious sentiment lit 
the fires of Smithfield, applied the tortures of the 
inquisition rack, burned Servetus, and wielded the 
murderous sword of St. Bartholomew. Now, I sub- 
mit the question if we have not a right to demand 
of every system offering itself as a Divine revela- 
tion, that it shall be consistent with the facts of 
nature, and that the being it presents for our wor- 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



ship shall be at least as kind and humane as our- 
selves ? 

" As I understand the test that Jesus gave, it was 
to follow him in his self-abnegation, his identification 
of his own interests with that of universal humanity. 
Doubtless any one so doing will become increasingly 
sensitive to impressions of the good and the true so 
as to know truth from an interior perception and not 
merely believe upon the say-so of a dogma. And if 
I mistake not, we are verging upon an age when this 
test of the Christ will be made the standard instead 
of that of creeds and priestly dictation. 

" The mere religious zealot sees nothing in all this 
change that is passing over human thought but an 
alarming lapse into skepticism. To me, on the con- 
trary, it is a sign of a healthy reaction and growth of 
the race toward a sturdy manhood. The outcome 
will be the winnowing of the chaff from the wheat. 
All assumed revelations must plead at the bar of 
reason and stand or fall by the judgment rendered 
at that final court of appeal." 

" If you are through, Judge, I would like to make 
a remark," said Dr. Manuel. " No doubt you will 
be very much surprised to learn that every question 
raised here was thoroughly solved more than one 
hundred years ago by the northern seer, Emanuel 
Swedenborg. I cannot forbear, if you will have the 
patience to listen, sketching briefly his method of 
solution." 

"I am sure," remarked Mr. Priest, "that we shall 
all be delighted to hear anything that Dr. Manuel 



JUDGE WISE'S ESSAY. l6l 

may wish to say upon the subject, but I must confess 
that the source to which he proposes to point us is 
about the last to which I should look for light." 

" I shall be really glad to hear Dr. Manuel upon 
the subject of Swedenborg's teachings," interposed 
Mr. True, " because I think he is sufficiently free and 
liberal to have a just apprehension of his author. But 
with the ordinary, mummified, ecclesiastical Sweden- 
borgian, I have no patience. It is my observation 
that he of all men, is the narrowest, most bigoted, 
most illiberal, and least in sympathy with the good 
and progressive in humanity. However, I do not 
charge these results in him to the spirit of his master, 
but rather to an utter want of perception of that 
spirit. As far as I have looked into Swedenborg's 
writings, I find him to be absolutely continental in 
his proportions, and his philosophy infinite in its 
grasp. But the manner in which his followers have 
patched together an ecclesiastical cloak of his tech- 
nicalities in which they strut and pose before the 
world as the church of the New Jerusalem is ludi- 
crous in the extreme. 

" The fact is, the rest of the world is sucking the 
juice out the orange of Swedenborg's teachings and 
leaving them the rind, with which they are choking 
out all liberty, charity, and intuition in themselves." 

"The Doctor, the Doctor," came from all sides. 
" Let us hear the Doctor ! " 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



DR. MANUEL S ADDRESS. 



" I do not propose," said Dr. Manuel, " to do more 
than give the fundamentals of our philosophy and in 
a general way to indicate its application in spiritual 
interpretation. 

" First, I will remind you of a Swedenborgian princi- 
ple already presented by Professor Fontaine, viz. : that 
there is a resemblance between the world and nature 
as Divine revelations in this, that upon the face or to 
sense perception is presented only the appearance of 
truth. The absolute truth is found only by going 
beneath the surface. 

" For instance, in nature the heavenly bodies appear 
to rise and set, passing daily around the earth, and the 
earth seems to be a plane. It has been only a few 
generations since it was ascertained that our planet was 
spherical, and that the phenomena of day and night, 
with the diurnal rising and setting of the heavenly 
bodies, are due to the revolution of the planet upon 
its axis. 

"Again, we seem to see objects directly, taking in 
vast areas at a single sweep ; whereas, we now know 
that what we really directly perceive is a small pic- 
ture on the retina of the eye which we connect with 
an assumed external world. We learn by experience 
and scientific thought to truly interpret nature's 
phenomena. 

" In the same way the letter of Scripture is only a 
phenomenal representation of a deeper spiritual sig- 
nificance. This deeper sense is consistent and 



dr. manuel's address. 163 

rational throughout. To undertake to construct a 
rational theology upon the basis of the literal sense is 
as futile as the attempt to construct a consistent, har- 
monious science of astronomy from the apparent 
movements of the heavenly bodies. 

"The fact that there is a spiritual sense in the 
Scriptures underlying the letter, has, tasome extent, 
ever been recognized by interpreters ; and efforts 
have been made to elicit that sense. It is really sur- 
prising that in the face of this palpable truth, so 
much stress should have been laid upon the mere 
appearance of the letter. Swedenborg alone, of all 
interpreters, has given the key to this interior sense. 
This he has done in what he calls the doctrine of 
correspondences, which is based on his philosophy of 
creation, or the relation of the phenomenal world of 
nature to the spiritual.' ' 

" But," inquired Mr. Priest, " how do you know, 
Doctor, that his system is true ? How shall we 
know that it is not arbitrary and fanciful ? " 

" It shows itself to be in the utmost degree lexical 
and real," responded the Doctor. " It grows neces- 
sarily and logically, as I have said, out of the phi- 
losophy of creation. According to that, the natural 
world, in whole and in particular, is an outbirth and 
expression of the spiritual. The spiritual world 
stands to the natural in the relation of cause to effect. 
Whatever, therefore, exists in the natural world is 
only a phenomenal representation of a spiritual 
entity. Spiritual humanity in its entirety being an 
image of God, and each man being a little image of 



164 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

the whole, he is a microcosm or a miniature universe, 
and has within himself the principles out of which 
proceed the macrocosm or the outer universe. Then, 
as each external natural thing is a form expression of 
a spiritual force or principle which gives it its exist- 
ence, which is, in fact, its soul or subjective life, the 
expression of spiritual truth upon the natural plane 
of thought would of course be through the use of the 
symbols to which it corresponds. To a spiritually 
enlightened mind, these symbols would convey the 
spiritual idea indicated ; but to mere natural thought, 
they would be regarded as real in themselves. 

" A revelation from God of spiritual truth, we would 
expect to take the form of the natural correspondence ; 
and all revelation, it should be remembered, is con- 
cerned, not with natural or scientific, but with spir- 
itual truth. The Bible, however, in this naturalistic 
and materialistic age, has been regarded as a mere 
scientific, external treatise, and from this error has 
arisen all the talk about its contradictions and 
discrepancies. 

" Now the question as to whether Swedenborg's 
science of correspondence, in accordance with which 
he has interpreted Scripture, is a true one, is to be 
determined by whether, when applied, it yields a 
consistent, harmonious, spiritual sense throughout. 
That it does is the opinion probably of every one who 
has by this means faithfully sought to know the truth. 
A key applied to a chest of drawers is found to un- 
lock them and reveal their contents. This is posi- 
tive proof that the key belongs to the locks. So the 



dr. manuel's address. - 165 

key of correspondence unlocks the mysteries of the 
Bible and reveals a connected, consistent system of 
spiritual thought, — truth recognized as such in the 
light of its own rationality, thus proving it to be the 
very key of the Scriptural lock. 

" You ask me where he got that key ? I answer by 
asking you how it matters where he got it ? His 
authority is no ground for receiving his teachings. 
We may conclude from the character of his teaching 
that the author was divinely illuminated, but that is 
no reason why we should turn around and bind our- 
selves to the chariot wheels of his ipse dixit. In 
other words, we should not make a pope out of him. 
Popes of any kind and to any extent are an unmiti- 
gated curse. 

" Now I pass to the objections of Judge Wise. Take 
the account of creation. If it is a revelation at all, it 
must be spiritual, and not scientific or natural. It has 
nothing to do with natural science except as inciden- 
tally nature's ongoings may be shadowed forth in the 
terms used to express spiritual ideas. The account is 
of man's spiritual condition in the beginning and his 
gradual development from a germinal, chaotic state 
to perfect manhood. ' In the beginning,' says the 
record, * God created the heavens [or the spiritual 
principles of man], and the earth' (or his external or 
natural mind). The natural mind w r as undeveloped 
or in a state of embryo. Darkness brooded over the 
abysses. By Divine influx, the perceptive faculties 
were awakened to a state of activity. God said, ' Let 
there be light, and there was light.' 



1 66 the earth's use in the universe. 

" We have not now time to follow the narrative 
throughout, but it will suffice to say that the whole is 
a most beautiful and consistent representation by cor- 
respondential symbols of the successive unfoldment 
of each and every department of man's mentality to 
complete manhood in God's image. 

" The account of the fall in the second chapter is 
that of the affections, symbolized by the woman, 
becoming enamoured of sense, the serpent, and drag- 
ging the intellect, the man, down and away from God. 
Thus the whole being was drawn away from the 
original paradisiacal state. The fashioning of the 
rib of a man into a woman is but the account in cor- 
respondential language of spiritual experiences and 
has no reference whatever to a surgical operation 
such as the literal meaning indicates. 

" Christians ought to have seen, from this one mar- 
velous story, that it, with all the series of statements 
with which it is found connected, are symbolical. 

" Thus, at once, we cut off the entire series of objec- 
tions to Genesis, at least as far as through the account 
of the Noachian flood. The killing of Abel by Cain, 
the marriage of Cain, the construction of a boat and 
the filling it with animals, and the covering of the 
earth with a flood of water, are not primarily histori- 
cal incidents at all, but purely spiritual representa- 
tions. Whatever of historical fact there may be 
portrayed in them is merely incidental. For instance, 
the spiritual crisis denoted by the flood may have 
ultimated itself in nature by violent storms and con- 
vulsions ; but this is not intended to be described, and 



dr. Manuel's address. 167 

the language used is of such a character as to exactly 
fit and emblemize the spiritual event indicated with- 
out reference to any external meaning whatever, 
whether consistent or otherwise. Understand, I do 
not mean to assert that in the account of creation, no 
natural event is involved. I mean only that whatever 
of natural or scientific fact may be there portrayed it 
is only incidental and subsidiary to the spiritual. 

" Now, if that account be spiritual it is taken out of 
the pale of chronology, and the scientist is afforded 
ample room for his ages of iron, stone, etc., in the 
original upbuilding of man, and so the seeming dis- 
crepancy between the Scripture account and the long 
ages of scientific development is cleared away. 

" As to the representations in the Bible of Jehovah's 
cruelties, etc., to which objections are made, they are 
easily explained on the general principles of the 
spiritual taking form in the natural. The mind is 
as a mould giving shape to the truth received. The 
sensual mind can conceive of God only as having 
body and parts and being affected by passions like 
man. Hence, spiritual truth coming down into such 
minds took sensuous shape according to their con- 
ceptions. Again, the truth that alienation from God 
results in pain and sorrow because it is an abnormal 
state, became in their sensuous perceptions the inflic- 
tion of punishment by an angry and jealous being, 
and in like manner of the rest. This is not absolute 
truth, but only apparent truth as seen from the stand- 
point of sense. 

" So Jewish history is correspondential. The sojourn 



168 the earth's use in the universe. 

of the Jews in Egypt, their wilderness journeyings, 
their wars and exterminations, their defeats and vic- 
tories — all are so shaped as to exactly portray the 
warfare of the individual man against his spiritual 
foes (falsity and evil), in the course of his journeying 
from mere naturalism and self-love to a spiritual ap- 
prehension of God, as the source and substance of his 
life. 

" All this talk of Mr. Ingersoll's and those of his 
kind, about the cruelties of Jehovah and the incon- 
sistencies of the Word, are but the shallowest bab- 
bling. The attempt to answer such on their plane of 
thought is but answering a fool according to his folly. 
One might as well attempt in this day to defend the 
old Ptolemiac system of astronomy, constructed upon 
the basis of the earth's being a flat plane, and the 
center of the universe. 

"As to the doctrine of the Atonement and others 
drawn from the letter alone, and which are of neces- 
sity illogical and irrational, they are all founded upon 
the basis of the mere sense perception. The central 
truth that there is but one life in this universe ; that 
God has in the Christ manifested this life in the 
ground of our sensuous mind so as to be apprehen- 
sible therein, and through which man may affection- 
ally and intellectually take hold of God, receive influx 
from the Divine, be brought back to the realization 
of God as his life, and so become at a state of at-one- 
ment with him, which is salvation, has been tortured 
into many fantastic and monstrous falsities. Or, per- 
haps, rather, I should say false theories have risen to 



dr. manuel's address. 169 

account for and render consistent the mere appear- 
ances of truth. 

" The underlying truth, however, has steadily out- 
rayed through the great mass of sensuous perver- 
sions, and has exercised a continual power in spiritu- 
alizing humanity. 

" As to the question of hell, man's freedom, etc., 
which Judge Wise has described as impaling thinkers 
upon the horns of a dilemma, our author is equally 
lucid. He explains the true nature of man's freedom 
by what he terms the doctrine of influx and equilib- 
rium. He shows that man has no life in himself, 
but is only a form receptive of life. To be free, he 
must be able, at will, to turn himself toward the good 
and receive its inflowing, or to evil and receive an 
influx thence. In order to have this power he is sus- 
pended between two counter-attractive forces, viz. : 
heaven and hell. These tend to draw him in opposite 
directions, and so he is balanced between the two, 
and being so held in a state of equilibrium he is able 
by voluntary choice to open himself to one or to the 
other. 

" Again, that which he chooses and adopts into his 
life, whether it be good or evil, becomes organized in 
him as character, fixed and unchangeable. His delight 
is in such things. Thus the devil's delight is in evil. 
He does not believe in the existence of good as such, 
and the presence of good is torture to him. The 
Lord in his mercy does all that can be done to miti- 
gate the suffering that necessarily follows from such 
a state of abnormality, and thus the condition of the 



170 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

infernals not only becomes tolerable, but in a sense 
enjoyable. And so the horrors depicted by theolo- 
gians have no foundation in fact." 

" But," interposes Rev. Priest, "what about the 
representations by Christ ? Such expressions as these, 
for instance : ' Cast into outer darkness, where there 
is wailing and gnashing of teeth,' 'into a lake of fire 
and brimstone, where the worn dieth not and the fire 
is not quenched,' etc. ? " 

" The answer is that this language is symbolical or 
correspondential," responded Dr. Manuel. "The 
being cast into a state of outer darkness means a 
state of falsity ; the gnashing of teeth means the 
clashing of these falsities in antagonism ; the lake of 
fire and brimstone means the sphere of lusts into 
which they plunge themselves and which is their life's 
love ; the worm dying not and the fire not being 
quenched implies the unchangeableness of this state. 
The character is fixed forever." 

" Then there is an endless hell after all ? " ex- 
claimed Mrs. Goode ; " and as I understand you to 
say, there must be a hell in order that man shall be 
free ? " 

"Yes, I so conclude," replied the Doctor. 

" Is this true only of our humanity or of all human- 
ities in the universe ? " 

" I understand it to be of all." 

" Then evil is involved in the very idea of creation ? 
Is it necessary to have devils in order that there can 
be angels ? " 

" I suppose we might state it in that way." 



DR. MANUEL S ADDRESS. I 7 I 

" And connected with the humanity of every earth 
there is an endless hell ? That is, hell is coexten- 
sive with creation ? " 

"Why, yes, that follows." 

" Now, Doctor, do you seriously offer this as a 
solution of the hell question ? Are you satisfied with 
it ? It seems to me worse than the orthodox hell. 
The Calvinist holds that all might be saved but for 
the use subserved by the damnation of some ; and 
the Arminian, that God would not have it exist if he 
could abolish it consistently with man's freedom. 
But you render its abolition impossible by making it 
a necessity of creation. Evil must exist in order that 
God can create at all. This is dreadful. And your 
efforts to tone down its horrors by giving the damned 
in hell a species of swinish, sensual satisfaction in 
their condition, and an endless blindness to anything 
better, affords no alleviation. Indeed, it renders 
matters only the worse. Contentment in depravity 
or slavery is always the worst feature of the case." 

" Allow me to say, Doctor, that your clearing away 
of Scriptural difficulties by the doctrine of correspon- 
dences, I followed with delight and thankfulness. 
But according to my judgment, upon this vexed hell 
question, your author, if you properly interpret him, 
most signally fails." 

" Excuse me, Professor Fontaine, we would like to 
hear from you on this subject." 

"I have," said the Professor, "been a most inter- 
ested listener to the Judge's objections, and the 
Doctor's explanations. The course of thought they 



172 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

traversed is all a very familiar road to me. I once, 
in vain, tried to rest the problem of evil just where 
Doctor Manuel has posited it. The very difficulties 
presented by you, Mrs. Goode, rose up as a mountain 
barrier, cutting off that way of escape. The ladder 
by which I was enabled finally to scale these barriers, 
was constructed from hints given by Swedenborg 
himself, together with Paul's statement that the use 
of our race is a Divine incarnation therein, in order 
to ulterior ends in the universe. In a true spiritual 
philosophy I found my guide-book revealing the way 
out of the labyrinth. Following its directions, I was 
led to the mount of vision whence all lines of truth 
in harmonious order lay mapped out before me." 

"Yes," responded Mrs. Goode, "and let me thank 
you personally for the uplift you have given me. I 
feel as if I had been down in a dark valley over- 
shadowed with clouds, but had, under your guidance, 
been ascending, and was now beginning to behold 
the beams of a glorious sunrise." 

" I am glad to know that I have been of any help 
to you," responded the Professor. " I should judge 
you to be of that mental make-up which cannot rest 
content without a thorough knowledge of the basic 
principles of truth. 

" The system of thought we have been considering 
in my letters has its roots in the subjective or ideal- 
istic philosophy. In the ratio of one's comprehension 
of this philosophy is he prepared to explore the trunk 
and branches of the tree springing from it. 

"There have been many crudities put forth in the 



DR. MANUEL S ADDRESS. 1 73 

name of the new thought. For instance, it has been 
assumed that because matter has no entity aside and 
distinct from spirit, therefore, it has no function nor 
reality. Such absurd notions have arisen from a lack 
of philosophical understanding. Immersed in a sea 
of sense as the race has long been, the interior 
rational in our educational training has been utterly 
ignored ; so that now, the light pouring down through 
the opening spiritual degree is dazzling to our un- 
prepared eyes. Unaccustomed to such brightness 
most people are not able to look steadily at the truth 
as a rational and consistent system. A few facts as 
such, are as much as they are able to receive ; and 
these looming up, appear as the whole sun. 

" Moreover, it is natural in their entrancement for 
them to conclude that they alone see the sun, or, at 
any rate, that no one else sees it properly who does 
not look through the keyhole of their little individu- 
ality. And so it comes to pass that the smaller the 
capacity, the more dazzling is the light to the be- 
holder, and the more narrow and bigoted he becomes. 
Charity and liberality are in the ratio of broadness of 
view. It takes but a small amount of truth to intoxi- 
cate a little mind, and to inspire in it the persuasion 
that its measure and quality constitute the standard 
by which all others must be judged." 

" The discussions of the past few meetings," said 
Mr. True, " have been rather by way of digression. 
I suppose, however, that we are now ready to pro- 
ceed with the regular program, and suggest that the 
Professor take charge of the club, and during the 



174 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

rest of the course direct its exercises in his own 
way." 

" Is the club satisfied to leave, in their present in- 
choate condition, the questions to which our attention 
has been called by Judge Wise ? " inquired the Pro- 
fessor. " To be sure, these matters will all be brought 
up again during our course, but would it not be well 
to spend a brief time in their further consideration, 
now, while our minds are drawn to them ? " 

" That would be my judgment," responded Dr. 
Manuel. 

" Then I will ask the class at our next meeting to 
listen to the reading of a brief sermon on the text, 
'Ye are complete in him.' " 



SERMON. 175 



XVII. 



SERMON. 



" ' For I through law, unto law died; that unto God I might live. 
In conjunction with Christ I have become crucified; nay, living no 
longer am I, but living in me is Christ.' — Gal. ii. 19, 20. 

" ' But of him ye are in Christ Jesus, who was made wisdom to us 
from God — even righteousness and sanctification and redemption; in 
order that according as it is written : He that is boasting, in the Lord 
let him be boasting.' — 1 Cor. i. 30, 31. 

" * For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead in bodily 
form, andjy*? are complete [or made full] in him.'' — Col. ii. 10. 

" Some time ago,, a book appeared bearing the sug- 
gestive title, ! Is Life worth Living ? ' The author 
made out a very plausible case in favor of the nega- 
tive of this question. And if we take the average 
man and make the decision to hinge on the nobility 
of the ends he seeks, together with his measure of 
attainment of happiness therein, we must in candor 
agree with the conclusion of the author, that the 
game of life is not worth the candle. If the com- 
parative amount of happiness or unhappiness be 
taken as the standard, most men would decide that, 
placed in the scales, the latter would tip the beam. 

" Consider the ends aimed at and the condition of 
humanity. The masses seem to have little or no 
aspirations beyond eating to live, and living to eat. 
Animal gratifications make up to them the summttm 



I76 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

bonum of life. For such enjoyments, or the means 
of attaining them, they engage in almost agonizing 
strife. And yet with all their striving and with 
whatever degree of attainment of the direct end 
sought, they utterly fail of happiness. A celebrated 
epicure and devotee of pleasure, looking upon a 
passing dog, sadly exclaimed, in the midst of his 
revelry, ' I would that I could exchange places with 
that beast.' This is not a greatly exaggerated ex- 
pression of the universal experience of those who 
attempt to slake their soul-thirst at sensuous foun- 
tains. All such but verify the saying, long ago, of 
the wise man, * Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' The 
bard of Avon makes Hamlet to say : — 

" ' Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 

That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 

When he himself might his quietus make 

With a bare bodkin (sword) ? Who would these fardels bear, 

To groan and sweat under a weary life ; 

But the dread of something after death, 

The undiscovered country, from whose bourne 

No traveler returns, puzzles the will ; 

And makes us rather bear the ills we have 

Than fly to others we know not of ? 

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.' 

" True, but for the ills that may await them in the 
mysterious unknown, to-morrow morning's sun would 
rise no more upon vast multitudes who are to-day 
groaning and sweating under a weary load. They 



SERMON. 177 

would take arms against their sea of troubles and end 
them by putting an end to their burdened existence. 
Could our eyes look upon the misery and wretched- 
ness, could our ears hear the wails of anguish, could 
our hearts enter into sympathy with the distress of 
even one great city for one short hour, we should be 
overwhelmed with horror. Now multiply this by the 
vast multitudes of our globe and we shrink back 
appalled. In passing, we may raise the question 
whether the Gethsemane agony of him upon whom 
was laid the burden of us all, upon whom were focal- 
ized all the woes of our fallen humanity, was not in 
large part due to his thus taking in at one view the 
whole mass of human misery and evil. 

" But whence this suffering ? We answer, it arises 
out of the very nature of things. The normal rela- 
tion of man to his Creator is the loving recognition 
of God as the only life and the conscious union to 
humanity as being one in him ; or, as the Saviour 
expressed it, it is the loving of God supremely, and 
the neighbor as ourselves. This is the end for which 
man was created. The soul was made in order that 
it might become a form of Divine good and thus a 
focal center through which the love of God shall vol- 
untarily and unrestrictedly outflow to others. This 
side that goal, there can be no enduring satisfaction. 
Within the race of humanity and within every mem- 
ber of the race, abides the Infinite Father ever press- 
ing outward in the effort to mould the soul into his 
own Divine image. 'We are the offspring of God/ 
says the Apostle. The very purpose of God in giving 



I78 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

us a time and space existence is the multiplication of 
himself in the persons of sons and daughters who 
shall be blessed in his love and who shall become in 
their degree voluntary centers for the radiation of his 
beneficence and power. The natural man, this natural 
soul and body, is intended only as the matrix for the 
inborning of a spiritual or Divine man. In us and 
through us, the Divine Father is ever evolving toward 
space and time manifestation. It follows that in the 
degree in which we make our life and happiness to 
consist in something other than the Divine purpose 
in us, in the ratio in which we turn our loves toward 
self and sense, we place ourselves in an attitude of 
antagonism with the fundamental law of our being. 
But happiness is only another name for harmony and 
that for heaven. Discord in the very nature of things 
is disease, and this means pain and looks toward 
death. Granting the postulates that God is love, 
and hence must ever outflow in love ; that the normal 
relation of man to God is the reciprocation of that 
love ; and that our race is fixed in a state of perver- 
sion with reference to the Divine life, then it follows 
that our race-suffering is an inevitable legitimate con- 
sequence. Any other result is inconceivable. God's 
justice is only the outworking of this eternal law. 
We cannot conceive of a being capacitated to enjoy 
happiness except as the result of harmonious condi- 
tions in himself and in his relations to his environ- 
ment ; and by the same law must we predicate 
suffering as the consequence of abnormal conditions 
and relations. It follows that the misery and wretch- 






SERMON. 179 

edness in which the world welters are but the meas- 
ure of man's departure from God. 

" But, one may say, indeed the devil does say, why 
not let us alone ? Why should not this law of pen- 
alty for evil be suspended ? If we are content to 
seek gratification in sensuality and self-love, why 
not let us thus enjoy ourselves free from consequent 
suffering ? The answer to this has already been 
given, in the statement that discord or disharmony 
in our relations to God and the ends of our existence 
is suffering. The Divine nature being love, he can 
but outflow in the conatus to bless. There can be no 
purpose in love other than to create a recipient form 
of his own infinite fullness. The Divine love can 
never be satisfied nor the ends of Divine wisdom 
achieved by anything less than this. What com- 
placency can we imagine God to have in a devil-form 
as the outcome of his creative work ? 

" Besides, an existence fixed in evil would be no boon 
but an inconceivable calamity. Imagine a band of 
people wholly given over to lust, self-love, and hatred, 
unmodified by any pure thought or good affection, even 
granting (if it were possible) no positive pain to attend 
such condition, would not extinction be preferable ? 

" It is impossible, as we have said, from the very 
nature of God and of man's necessary relation to him, 
for man to be happy but in a state of conscious union 
with him, and in reciprocation of his love. As it is 
the very nature of God to go out in love, seeking to 
give himself in blessing, so it is the correlative nature 
of man to be a recipient of life, and to require for his 



l80 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

happiness the fullness of the Divine inflowing. And 
hence it is his nature to experience in the absence of 
such consciousness of God, an emptiness, an aching 
void ; and to suffer, in the ratio of his perversion and 
conscious alienation, pain and sorrow. The cry of 
the soul, in its sense of need, is expressed by the 
Psalmist : ' As the heart panteth after the water- 
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.' And 
the results of perversion are disclosed in the request 
of the rich man in Hades for a drop of water to cool 
his parched tongue. 

" The yearning love of the Father to bless, to seek, 
and to save is exemplified in Jesus Christ. The very 
object of the Divine Incarnation was to bring heaven 
down to man. Christ is God the Father in his world, 
reconciling it to himself. Jesus Christ, the Son, is 
God in our humanity ; he is the Word made flesh ; 
he is God brought down to the plane of the natural 
and even to sense apprehension; he is the good shep- 
herd going out upon the mountain to seek his lost 
sheep. ' God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him 
might not perish but have everlasting life.' In him 
is life. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He 
gives to all who come to him rest and peace. He is 
made wisdom to us from God — even righteousness, 
sanctification, and redemption. ' He that drinks of 
the water that I shall give him,' said the Lord, 
' shall never thirst. It shall be in him a well of 
water springing up into everlasting life.' 'Ye are 
complete in him.' He satisfies every need of the 
soul. 



SERMON. 1 8 I 

" ' He is made wisdom to us from God/ says the 
Apostle. The word wisdom signifies the truth as to 
our relations with God and with our fellow-man. 
These generically comprehend all truth. All truth 
springs out of these two fundamental relations. ' In 
God we live, move, and have our being.' Again, 
'Ye are his offspring.' Humanity is in God. He is 
the all of life. Man's life is only God's life in him. 
The Lord Jesus was and is God manifest in human 
form. He said, ' I am the vine, ye are the 
branches.' And he prayed, 'Thou Father in me 
and I in them, that they may be one in us.' 

" But it may be objected that he was speaking here 
not of humanity in general, but only of his disciples. 
True, but the only difference between his disciples 
and others was that they recognized and consciously 
realized their life in God, while others did not. The 
difference was not a matter of absolute difference of 
relation to God, but only one of conscious perception 
of that relation. The mere opening- of the spiritual 
perception so as to recognize the truth that in God 
we are and that the Divine life in which we are is 
manifest in Jesus Christ, makes all the difference be- 
tween saints and sinners. Such opening of the eyes 
to see the eternal fact is faith. There can be no 
actual spatial separation of man from God. The 
only separation possible is in man's false conceptions 
in the natural mind, of his relations. He may, and in 
the unregenerate state he does, think of himself as 
having life in himself, and of God as a personality 
spatially distinct from himself. But if men are 



1 82 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

branches of Christ, the vine, or as the Apostle ex- 
presses it, members of the body of Christ, then the 
race is an organic unity and not so many distinct 
monads without any necessary community of life. 
Co-eternally in God, all the race has ever been an 
organic unit with one common life. In Jesus Christ, 
this unity with God and man is manifested in the nat- 
ural degree and is by the believer recognized. Such 
recognition is faith, and faith makes the Christian. 

" But the world, in its wisdom, knows not these 
truths. It founds its notions on sense appearances 
and assumes that God is spatially posited off in some 
remote part of the universe ; that man deals with 
him as an independent individuality — as Jones with 
Smith ; that each man is constituted with a self-inher- 
ent life absolutely distinct from others and indestructi- 
ble as the very Divine himself. Milton expressed the 
common idea in making his Satan defy the thunder- 
bolts of the Almighty, boasting that he was immortal 
as God. The world in its wisdom thinks that the end 
to be accomplished in order to salvation, is the bring- 
ing of this personal selfhood into conformity with the 
law of relation to God in order to make it holy. 

" From this view, suppose one to recognize the 
truth that man should love God supremely and the 
neighbor as himself, still his idea of salvation can be 
no other than that of forcing the natural selfhood into 
obedience, thereby rendering it in God's sight, good. 
As to his fellow-man, the attempt to realize a practi- 
cal unity is not thought of. He would regard any 
one who should advocate it as a crank or a fool. 



SERMON. 183 

" Many are making just this mistake, and the results 
are manifold and varied according to the exact men- 
tal attitude of the percipient. If he be a mere 
moralist, he will satisfy or attempt to satisfy his con- 
science by balancing some imaginary meritorious 
deeds against his evil ones and thus adjusting the 
scales. If he be a Christian legalist, he will seek by 
acts of obedience, by pietism, by ceremonialism, etc., 
to render his personal self holy. He will be very 
faithful, it may be, in church going, in keeping the 
letter of the Sabbath, in tithing the mint, and the 
annis and the cummin, and will be zealous in judg- 
ing others. If by all these means he succeeds in 
keeping down conscience, he blossoms out into a 
pharisee, all coated over with a glamour of self-right- 
eousness. But if with all his efforts, his conscience 
will not be downed, but persists in its condemnation, 
he will tell you in sadness that he hopes he is a Chris- 
tian but 

" ' Oft it causes anxious thought, 

Am I his or am I not ? ' 

" Or still again, one may hush the clamors of con- 
science and galvanize his personal selfhood into a 
sense of peace and confidence by falsely applying to 
this personality the spiritual promises of the Word 
addressed only to those who have crucified this self 
and attained the Divine selfhood in Christ. One 
may get such confidence by an act of obedience to 
an external ordinance. He reasons thus : God's 
promise is to those who do so and so, who are bap- 
tized, etc. I have done this, and hence, I am safe. 



184 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

I am of the number of those of whom it is said, 
' There is now no condemnation to them who are in 
Christ Jesus.' His natural selfhood he imagines is 
sanctified by this obedience to an ordinance. All this 
is the wisdom of the world that knows not God, but 
goes about to establish its own righteousness. 

" Again, much of the so-called saintship of the past, 
and much of the holiness idea of the present day, has 
a tinge of this wisdom of the world. In general, 
whatever tends to set one off from others in a fancied 
sense of personal superiority is of the wisdom of the 
world. The wisdom of Christ loses sight of self and 
knows no goodness, truth, or love, or spiritual excel- 
lence but in God. It seeks to lay down all thought 
of self and so to enter into organic unity with God in 
Christ, as to know no other self than him. Such is 
its abnegation that even the demand of self for recog- 
nition in order to condemnation, becomes an imper- 
tinent intrusion. The feeling is, ' Of course self is 
nothing and God is all, and the semblance of any 
other thought is an absurdity/ 

" The Apostle describes the sense of self-abnegation 
in the language : ' For I through law, unto law died ; 
that unto God I might live. In conjunction with 
Christ I have become crucified ; nay, living no longer 
am I, but living in me is Christ.' The word law is 
the comprehensive term of the Apostle to designate 
that state in which by any means whatever the effort 
is being made to sanctify the personal selfhood — to 
save the life instead of losing it — to save the per- 
sonal self by making it holy. 



SERMON. 185 

" The truth must be learned that this natural self 
was never intended to be made holy nor saved. It 
was never intended as other than a temporary struc- 
ture auxiliary to the erecting of a spiritual building, 
eternal in the heavens. It is but a matrix for the 
inborning of the spiritual man. Having performed 
its mission, and in the act of performing it, it dies. 
It is replaced by the Divine life inflowing. The 
attempt to save it is to act from the standpoint of 
the law, or the old covenant of works. 

" In all cases, however, the first movement of the soul 
Godward is upon this plane, in as much as an effort 
to save the personal self is the first step toward the 
despair that leads to Christ. The man sees himself 
out of harmony with God and in a state of condemna- 
tion. He realizes that he does not love God nor his 
neighbor as he should. So he sets about amending 
his ways. He sets a watch over thought, word, and 
deed. But his efforts result in more fully revealing 
his shortcomings. He is brought finally in despair 
to cry out, i Who shall deliver me from this body of 
death?' The answer comes, ' Jesus Christ.' Thus 
he is led to abandon all thought of self-merit and to 
look only for life and good in Christ. The law 
becomes a schoolmaster to bring organic unity with 
Christ. The result of such unity is that Christ 
becomes the believer's righteousness or justification. 
Our relations toward God become adjusted. The 
sense of condemnation is lifted. Conscience ceases 
its accusings, but becomes rather a fountain of peace 
in which the soul bathes in transports of delight. 



1 86 the earth's use in the universe. 

' There is now no condemnation to them that are in 
Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the Spirit.' At one with God, there is no ground of 
condemnation. The old self is crucified. Self lives 
no longer, but in self Christ lives. 

" Another consequence is sanctification. That is a 
working within every faculty of a love for and a sense 
of purity and a shrinking from everything ignoble, 
unclean, profane, or unworthy a child of God. This 
term broadly comprehends the development of the 
life of God in the soul, the infilling of all the faculties 
with love, accompanied by an effort after perfect con- 
formity with Eternal Truth. It is the organizing of 
the whole man into the image of him who brought 
the soul out of darkness into his marvelous light. 
Righteousness, or Justification, has reference to the 
appeasing of conscience by the rectifying of our rela- 
tions toward God ; sanctification includes the whole 
subsequent work of growth in love. 

" Redemption is the third and last of the results 
mentioned by the Apostle as springing out of union 
to Christ. We are taught everywhere in the Scrip- 
tures that this world is under the dominion of an evil 
power called the devil, or Satan, to whom the whole 
race-body is in bondage. This monster-evil force is 
distinct from our race. So much we know. We 
need not now inquire who, whence he is, or why he 
exists. It suffices in this connection to know that he 
is in the world and that according to Christ he is the 
author of all earth's woes ; and further, that to deliver 
us from his power is primarily and comprehensively 



SERMON. 187 

the mission of Christ. The Lord teaches us that 
there is no good but in God and no evil but from the 
devil ; that consciously we are hence only recipients 
of life from God or from the devil ; that we are ser- 
vants of him to whom we yield ourselves as recipients ; 
that we cannot in our own strength deliver ourselves 
from the devil any more than we can make one hair 
white or black or add one cubit to our stature ; and 
that it is only by vital conjunction with God in 
Christ that there is deliverance for us. By such 
union we become insulated from the life of evil, and 
become imbued with the life of God in Christ. His 
life and ours become one. 

" The having dropped away from the selfhood and 
having come to recognize all truth, love, or other 
manifestations of the Spirit as only God's life in us, 
we are freed from the temptation to self-righteous- 
ness. And on the other hand, recognizing our false 
and evil thoughts as not self-generated, but as an 
influx from the devil, we are not cast down by them 
nor self-condemned. 

"We can exultingly exclaim with the Apostle, ' Who 
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect, or 
chosen ones ? ' Like the Lord in the wilderness, we 
say, 'Get thee hence, Satan.' I don't accept your 
suggestions, nor adopt them as mine nor as belonging 
to me or springing from me. My life is hid with 
Christ in God. It is written, ' Thou shalt worship the 
Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' Thus 
the believer being lifted out of the murky atmosphere 
of either complacent self-righteous phariseeism or of 



i88 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



torturing self-censure, rests in peace, basking in the 
sunlight of eternal truth. And again, as to the dis- 
tressing fears of whatever kind that render the life of 
the non-Christian a burden, he is panoplied against 
them all. He has eternal life, and therefore has all 
possible good. Wherever he may be or in whatso- 
ever condition, he is in Christ and cannot but be 
blessed. He cannot fear death, for he has the life of 
him who has power over death. He cannot fear tem- 
poral want, for he has the promise that to him all 
temporal good shall be added. He cannot fear afflic- 
tions of any kind, for these are but ministers from his 
Father to lead him heavenward. He cannot in any 
wise fear for himself. And as to his loved ones, the 
same Father's hand which is his own strength and 
stay, he trusts to guide and sustain them. 

" Besides all this, he realizes a fulfillment of the law 
of righteousness, in his conscious Divine selfhood. 
As a result of conscious oneness with God and 
humanity and the merging of the individual self- 
hood into the universal, the law of life becomes to 
him love to God and the neighbor. Thus there is a 
spontaneous fulfillment of the spiritual precepts, 
given by Christ, which have ever been stumbling- 
blocks to the law-plane of thought and feeling. In 
Matthew we read: 'Ye have heard that it was said: 
" Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you 
not to resist evil ; on the contrary, whoever smites 
thee on thy right cheek, turn the other to him also." 
Ye heard that it was said, " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, 



SERMON. 189 

love your enemies and pray for those who persecute 
you, that you may become the sons of your Father 
who is in the heavens. ... Be ye, therefore, perfect 
as your Heavenly Father is perfect." ' 

" The spiritual law of love to God and man had 
been given to the Jews in the writings of Moses. 
But from the standpoint of a belief in a distinct, 
autocratic existence outside of and separate from the 
Infinite life, they recognized the impossibility of 
obeying this law of Love. So they explained it 
away. For love to God, they substituted a vast mass 
of formularies and ceremonials ; and love to man 
they replaced by the maxim of love to friends, with 
hatred to enemies. Hatred to the latter was no less 
a virtue than love for the former. And to a degree, 
the same course has been pursued in the Christian 
world with reference to these precepts of Christ. It 
is assumed that as a matter of course, obedience to 
them is impossible, and that hence the Lord never 
designed that they should be literally obeyed. Even 
so spiritual a writer as Canon Farrar enters into a 
special plea to show that the Lord did not mean 
what he said. We must infer that Canon Farrar and 
the Christian world generally are still looking from 
the old time — the law-standpoint, and not from the 
mental position of a vital organic unity with Christ. 
For from a practical realization of oneness with 
God and man such love springs up spontaneously 
as the very law of life. God becomes the Divine 
self, and humanity becomes the enlarged human self. 
The fountain spring of the life is consciously realized 



I gO THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

in the very deeps of Divinity and as being in its human 
expression one and undivided, the same life as that 
which animates all men and manifests itself in the 
varied forms of creation. All evil and falsity are 
perceived to spring only from false conceptions of 
these fundamental truths together with the lusts and 
self-love thereby engendered in the natural man. 
The neighbor becomes only the larger self, and to 
hate him or to seek his injury becomes the hating 
and injuring of self. Such hatred would be only 
opening the way for the devil to flow into one's self. 
The loving of enemies from this view becomes self- 
protection. 

" In brief, we may sum up the results of organic 
union to Christ as comprehending deliverance from 
the devil with all that is thereby and therein implied. 
All the woes of humanity, all its perverted states of 
mind and heart, all its diseases and suffering of both 
soul and body, are of the devil. But Christ's mission 
was to destroy the works of the devil. He does this 
by having overcome all evil in the human nature of 
himself, thus organizing himself a Divine personal 
center in the natural degree, having all power in 
heaven and earth, whence and in which the Divine 
life with all the powers and beatitudes is freely im- 
parted to whosoever will receive. We in him inherit 
into all the fullness of his holiness, life, and power. 
All our diseases and weaknesses and pains, whether 
of soul or body, are merely indices of the ratio in 
which we are failing to enter into our inheritance. 

" The time is coming when all tears will be wiped 



SERMON. 191 

from our eyes, when there will be no more pain 
nor sorrow, sickness nor death. Why ? Will it 
be because of any new feature or powers added to 
Christianity ? No. It will be because men will have 
learned to avail themselves of the power and life now 
awaiting their appropriation in Christ. The river of 
life flows hard by the soul of each one of us. We 
only need to dip up and drink. We thirst and pine, 
are feeble and faint, fearful and timid, diseased in 
body and soul, hastening unto death and half dead 
while we live, all because we fail to appropriate the 
life and health and power which is ours in Christ 
now. We are complete in him now. We have only 
to recognize our inheritance in Christ and enter upon 
it, now. We have a right to claim in him all good 
now. We are in the Scriptures invited to take our 
place in the body of Christ, and in opposition to the 
devil's suggestions and accusations of weakness and 
sinfulness to claim soul and bodily health and purity. 
" The body is an essential part of the man. It is 
the man thinking, feeling, and acting in the outmost 
range of his life. Christ's salvation is not partial or 
incomplete. It comprehends the whole man and 
includes complete deliverance from the devil's power, 
influence, and effects. It is to the uttermost. We 
all recognize the fact that redemption is to include 
the body some time. When ? Is it a question of so 
many revolutions of the earth on its axis — or is it a 
question of soul state ? The truth is, as to both soul 
and body, as to holiness and health, as to love and 
power, how far these shall extend and prevail in us, 



I92 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

depends solely on the degree in which we under- 
standingly enter into the Divine fullness in Christ and 
claim our own, purchased by him for us and awaiting 
our appropriation. In Christ we have all power. 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox beautifully expresses this idea 
of our Divine inheritance in a fugitive little poem. 
" She says : — 

" ' There is no thing we cannot overcome. 

Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, 
Or that some trait in-born makes thy whole life forlorn, 

And calls down punishment that is not merited. 
Back of thy parents and grandparents lies 

The great Eternal Will! That, too, is* thine 

Inheritance : — strong, beautiful, divine ; 
Sure lever of success for one who tries. 

" ' Pry up thy fault with this great lever — Will. 

However deeply bedded in propensity, 
However firmly set, I tell thee, firmer yet 

Is that vast power that comes from Truth's immensity. 
Thou art a part of that strange world, I say ; 

Its forces lie within thee, stronger far 

Than all thy mortal sins and frailties are. 
Believe thyself divine, and watch and pray. 

" ' There is no noble height thou can'st not climb ; 

All triumphs may be thine in Time's futurity, 
If, whatsoe'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt, 

But lean upon the staff of God's security. 
Earth has no claim the soul cannot contest. 

Know thyself part of the Supernal source, 

And naught can stand before thy spirit's force. 
The soul's divine inheritance is best.' " 

" Professor, I must encore you," cried Mrs. Priest, 
clapping her hands. "That is just what the world 



SERMON. 193 

needs to-day. You have said just what I have been 
longing to hear for years. I have dimly seen this 
vital union to Christ to be the essential feature of 
Christianity, and have endeavored to show it to my 
husband, but he has been so steeped in his formulas 
and creeds that I could not get him even to look in 
the direction I tried to point him. This is a living 
gospel and must be to him who receives it the power 
of God unto salvation." 

" I am greatly pleased to hear you speak so, Mrs. 
Priest. I am quite sure that a practical realization 
of vital, organic oneness with God in Christ is the 
truth now needed by the Church. But to get this 
understandingly there must be a radical change in 
the point of vision whence the whole realm of the- 
ological and psychological thought is viewed. There 
must be attained a spiritual conception of truth 
founded on a true spiritual philosophy. There must 
be a radical change in our method of thinking of 
God, of humanity, of Christ, of nature or the phe- 
nomenal world, of man's relations to God, etc., ere 
much advance can be made in the direction of a vital- 
ized Christianity. In other words, materialism must 
be uprooted from the popular mind. As long as the 
conception o f nature is held that there is a substance 
other than God underlying nature's appearances, of 
which these appearances are properties and mani- 
festations ; that by consequence, God is essentially 
separated from man and from this matter substance, 
dwelling off in some remote point in space ; and that 
man is endowed with life inherent, and is thus in 



194 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

essence other than an expression of the Divine, — as 
long as such materialistic conceptions prevail, it is 
impossible that this truth of organic unity with God 
in Christ can be clearly and consistently apprehended, 
or that man shall love God and the neighbor as the 
law of relation requires. 

" But a change is rapidly coming. Materialism is 
on trial in the minds of thinking men. The facts of 
man's alienation from God and his consequent con- 
demnation and suffering ; of his deliverance through 
the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, etc., viewed 
from this materialistic standpoint, become, as shown in 
the essay of Judge Wise, hideous caricatures of the real 
truth. The difficulty lies not with the facts, but with 
the explanation of them. To those who look at those 
facts and describe them from the sense point of vision, 
and so quote the literal expressions of the Scriptures 
as in all cases being the absolute truth, we might 
respond : Certainly you are right, and there need be 
no contention between us. Looked at from the out- 
side, these facts present just the appearance you 
describe, and your explanation is a legitimate deduc- 
tion from these appearances. But we should re- 
member always that there are two sides to truth, an 
outside and an inside, the form and the essence. 
They are not inconsistent with but supplementary to 
each other. Either of them without the other is 
only a partial view, and may, in fact, become a mon- 
strous perversion. Come, now, let us reason together. 
Let us together view both sides of the shield." 

" Now, Professor/' said Mrs. Goode, " if you will do 



SERMON. 195 

for the hell question what the sermon read has done 
for that of the Atonement, I shall be under obliga- 
tions to you. Ever since Dr. Manuel's brilliant fail- 
ure to elucidate the matter, the subject has been 
haunting me." 

"I have," responded the Professor, "just received 
a book written by an old college classmate, which 
embraces that subject. I think it probable that a 
review of the work, particularly with reference to this 
point, would, at the present stage of our investiga- 
tions, be entertaining and instructive. It will be the 
program for our next meeting." 

" If you have a moment to listen," exclaimed Miss 
Wise, " I would like to read a few words from a let- 
ter just received from a former schoolmate. The 
thoughts are somewhat along the line of the law of 
the spirit as presented in the sermon." 

" Please read," was the general response. 

" My friend writes : ' I don't care so much about 
what people think of me; but I do like to be let alone. 
I don't like to live in an atmosphere where every- 
body is on the qui vive to find or pick some flaw in 
his neighbor and make such things the staple of con- 
versation. I don't expect people to be perfect. I 
even expect to find, on close examination, serious 
faults in my friends — those whom I hold closest to 
my heart. We all inherit into a sphere of deviltry 
reaching back to Adam, and with all of us it is only 
a question of how much or of what quality of this 
infernalism has been dealt out to each. For any of 
us to busy ourselves making faces at our neighbors 



I96 THE EARTH*S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

or calling them names because of their evil states, is 
for the pot to call the kettle black, or one small-pox 
patient to be abusing another because the latter is 
broken out more than himself. What we want to do 
is to look beyond the mere mortal of all to the perfect 
spiritual man that is to be built upon this external, 
imperfect seeming. I like the Prodigal Son, and I 
don't like the boy that stayed at home. I don't like 
the I-am-holier-than-thou spirit at all. ... I am try- 
ing to cultivate that spirit that blames no one, but 
helps all. If another is burdened with a hereditary, 
limping, faltering, weak, or vicious mortal mind and 
soul, then what ? Shall I add to his burden by load- 
ing him down with my contempt ? Shall I add to 
his suffering by thrusting him through with darts of 
cruel thoughts ? Or rather shall I not say, " Poor 
fellow ! You have a heavy load to carry. I will 
lighten it as much as I may by enveloping you in an 
atmosphere of goodo You must suffer by reason of 
your infernalized state. I will deliver you from it as 
far as I may be able by sending you thoughts of 
love." 

"'This is Christianity. It is common sense as well. 
It is the only means of protecting ourselves against 
the inflowings and dominance of hell in our own 
souls and bodies. Every evil thought of another in- 
dulged, every harsh judgment, opens the way in us 
for hell's inflowing and fixes us in the clamps of infer- 
nalism. We can't afford to think evil of others, no 
matter what they do to us or to others. " Judge not, 
lest ye be judged ; for with what judgment ye judge ye 






SERMON. I97 

shall be judged." We need not assume to be idiots 
and declare people good and faultless when we see by 
their actions that they are not. " By their fruits ye 
shall know them." Certainly. What I mean is that 
although we may see by their actions that they are 
infernalized and suffering hell torments, we are not 
to allow in ourselves a feeling of antagonism to be 
aroused ; but should rather in love go out to them, 
affording them, as far as in us lies, the help they 
need. Strength is debtor to weakness precisely in 
the ratio of its superiority. In the degree in which 
I suffer myself to become angry and resentful at 
some personal affront or even at any amount of per- 
sonal injury and strike back in thought, word, or deed, 
I am placing myself on the same infernal plane, and 
drinking the same spirit as he who does me the in- 
jury. If I do good only to him who does good to me, 
what thank have I ? Do not even the publicans 
(people who are controlled by the world spirit) the 
same ? " Do good to the evil and the unthankful," 
etc.' " 



I98 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



XVIII. 

BOOK REVIEW. 

This work is the expansion of a sermon from the 
text, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall 
save his people from their sins." 

The subject naturally falls into two divisions, viz. : 
the Man Jesus and his Mission. Upon the discus- 
sion of Part I. we need not dwell. Suffice it to say 
that a very graphic and faithful description of the 
Man is presented, portraying his Divine Genesis, his 
sinless, and altogether extraordinary life and works, 
his resurrection and subsequent appearance to John 
on the Isle of Patmos, proclaiming himself the 
First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega, Begin- 
ning and the End, the Almighty. The author justly 
concludes that as a historical character, there is no 
way of accounting for Jesus Christ other than on the 
hypothesis of his being, as he believed himself to be, 
and as was claimed for him by his biographers, the 
Christ of prophecy, the "Word made Flesh." 

At the threshold of the second division of the sub- 
ject, the question is suggested, From what is man to 
be saved ? This leads to the consideration of a prior 
question, viz. : What in the normal condition of the 
race, or that of sinlessness, would be the process of 
its evolution ? Of this we happily have a perfect 



BOOK REVIEW. I99 

example in Jesus Christ. He was, as a man, the 
race representative, showing us what man is. In his 
development from infancy to complete consciousness 
with the Father, in body as well as in Spirit, his suf- 
ferings excepted, he but exemplified the normal evo- 
lution of the race and of each individual of the race, 
had error never entered. He knew no sin in himself. 
He grew to manhood as other men, and thence 
evolved in every faculty of his entire ego, down to 
the very flesh and bones of his bodily organism, a 
consciousness of Divinity. And what he did is what 
every individual of the race would do through a regu- 
lar process of growth but for the obstruction of per- 
versions in the natural mind. Indeed, such is the 
experience that awaits those who shall be born into 
existence after the process of race-deliverance now 
going forward shall have been completed. Every 
child then coming into the world will as naturally 
and unobstructedly unfold Godward as a flower opens 
its petals to the sun. 

But what now hinders ? In answering this ques- 
tion, the author assumes the truth of the literal state- 
ments of the Scriptures, that from the beginning 
there has been, somehow, for some reason, and from 
some source outside of our humanity, an influence 
causing mere appearances to be taken as realities, 
and infinite verities to be regarded as mere phan- 
tasms. This power or influence, termed the devil, 
Satan, the old dragon, etc., has held the race under a 
sort of hypnotic bondage. To deliver the world from 
this spell, and thus to destroy the works of the devil, 



200 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

was the mission of the Christ. In himself, he has 
established a Divine focal center whence radiates 
power for the deliverance of all who become recep- 
tive of his outflowing Spirit. His life, his truth, his 
goodness, his will, his power, await appropriation by 
all who will receive them. "Ye are complete in 
him," says the Apostle. In the author's view, the 
race is one organic body, and not so many indepen- 
dent dissociate atoms. The whole body is under- 
going the delivering and transforming process as a 
one, and it is only in the salvation of the whole that 
any one can attain full fruition of blessedness. I will 
now read from the book : — 

" The soul has being in Spirit and expression in 
the body. The consciousness of man may become 
opened into the region of his Being in God, and thus 
beyond the mere existence state. Man's potential 
individuality in God is essentially Divine, but as an 
actualized individuality, possessing a time and space 
consciousness, he is other than God in seeming and 
must ever remain so. The innermost point of his con- 
sciousness, therefore, is what we have termed Spirit." 

In order to understand the author's thought, a little 
explanation may be needed. He holds that man as 
a germinal individuality has been an eternal inher- 
ency in God, and that birth and life in the existence 
state is but the development of that germinal possi- 
bility into realized actuality. As an existent being, 
man is composed of spirit, soul, and body. The 
Spirit is the innermost degree ; the soul an outer ex- 
tension and expression of the spirit ; while the body 



BOOK REVIEW. 201 

is the externalization of the soul and through the 
soul of the spirit. The soul is thus an intermediate 
between the spirit and the body. It is the seat of 
conscious mentality and volition. The body is its 
servant, its image, reflecting its states of thought and 
affection. The body ever tends to take on beauty or 
deformity, sickness or health, strength or weakness, 
according to the soul's behests. The sin of the soul 
shows itself in the body, and health or disease in 
the soul thought tends to work itself out in the 
body. If the soul holds that the body must be sick 
or weak, such becomes the law of the body. Physi- 
cal death is but the result of the soul's death. From 
this state Jesus Christ came to save the race. Here 
we will pause for a moment upon the author's teach-, 
ing as to what death is. "Death," he says, "is the 
cessation of consciousness upon any plane of thought 
and feeling, of which the term is predicated. The 
body dies when it ceases to be animated by conscious 
life. So the soul dies when conscious life ceases upon 
its plane. In the Scriptural sense of the term, death 
means a state or condition which tends to and ulti- 
mates in a cessation of consciousness. ' In the day 
that thou eatest thereof dying, thou shalt die/ That 
is, the process is set up, tending toward a cessation 
of consciousness. ' The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die.' God being the only life, the all of life, it fol- 
lows that permanent or abiding life in man who is the 
mere recipient of life, can come only from his receiv- 
ing the life of God and making it his own. Indeed, 
the life which man possesses as a personality aside 



202 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

from God is not real life, but only a seeming. i He 
who believes not in me,' says Christ, i is dead al- 
ready. And this very seeming must cease, whether 
it be of the soul or the body. Eternal or age-abiding 
life is God's life consciously received and appropri- 
ated, in such way as to make it our own. This is 
offered to us in Jesus Christ. The first expression of 
the death consequent upon failure to accept the 
Divine Life is the dissolution of the body. Then 
follows upon all the unregenerate, a similar soul 
catastrophe called the second death/ 

"The end to be attained by existence is the open- 
ing of the natural consciousness into the realm of 
Spirit and organizing the natural degree into unity 
with the Spiritual. At birth, man has consciousness 
only in the external, natural degree. Growth to man- 
hood is only the completion of the process of fully 
developing the existence degree as a matrix for the 
inborning of the Spiritual. This end being attained, 
one or other of two things must take place. The 
soul must turn to Spirit and seek its life therein, 
and thereby open the way for the Spirit's inborning, 
and the vivification and eternizing of the soul and 
hence of the body, or the soul must turn outward to 
the sense realm of shadows and close the avenue 
spiritward. The former is regeneration — the second 
birth, the saving of the soul ; the latter is termed the 
losing of the soul. Salvation then consists in the 
organizing into the soul of a consciousness of Spirit. 
It is a displacing of the natural or sense conscious- 
ness and the replacement thereof with a Divine 
consciousness. 



BOOK REVIEW. 203 

" Full salvation of course consists in bringing the 
thought and affections into conscious unity with the 
Divine upon every plane of life, that of the body as 
well as of the soul. But up to the present, salvation 
has been limited to the soul, the body not participat- 
ing in the redemption of Christ. The reason for this 
has been that the thought of the race has been so 
materialistic as to preclude the possibility of a faith 
that would open the way for the organizing of the 
Divine into the external corporeal degree, after the 
likeness and example of the Christ. A man's thought 
states, that is, his faith determines the quality and 
extent of the Divine influx. But with the common 
idea of the substantiality of matter such as the race 
has held it, there could be no basis in the mind for a 
belief in the Divine immanence in the body working 
its regeneration. Hence, nothing remained but that 
it should die. This death is not a permanent or end- 
less state, however. Man was generated to be regen- 
erated. This is God's purpose and it will be accom- 
plished. The words of Christ to Nicodemus, 'Ye 
must be born again,' or from above, are of universe- 
wide application. 

" This regenerative process, the opening into con- 
sciousness of God within, must take place with all 
humanities everywhere. This is God's method of 
creating angels or saints, if you please. In worlds 
where there is no deflection from the line of moral 
development, the child grows up, matures the ex- 
ternal degree, and then unfolds gradually and nor- 
mally into consciousness of God within. But in 



204 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

our world, where the natural is drawn aside by the 
hypnotic influence of the devil, the process becomes 
complicated and difficult. In the first place, a con- 
sciousness of the very existence of the spiritual can 
come only by the special influence of the Spirit flow- 
ing from the risen Christ. By this means there is 
generated a perception of alienation from the truth 
in thought and affections, called in the old termin- 
ology, conviction. Following this comes an action 
of the will, a turning away from the evil and the 
false, to the good and the true, as far as perceived. 
This in the Scriptures is called repentance. A con- 
tinuance of this process, that is, a persistent walking 
toward the light, leads finally (quickly or more 
slowly, according to circumstances), to such an in- 
tense realization of God as the only good, and such a 
reliance on him as the only source of life as to bring 
the percipient mind into a state of at-onement with 
him. This has been called conversion. Now com- 
mences the Christian life of denying the old self and 
implanting the Divine into every faculty. This process 
has been termed sanctification. Faith is the percep- 
tion of the truth from its first dawning to its culmina- 
tion in conversion, and thence onward into the com- 
pletion of the process in perfected transformation of 
the whole man into the Divine image, that is, the es- 
tablishment in God of his every range and degree 
of consciousness." . . . Again we read : — 

" We now come to consider the nature of the 
corporeal body, its death and resurrection. 

" The body is only the outermost degree of the ex- 



BOOK REVIEW. 205 

ternal range of existence. It is merely the exter- 
nalized thought constituting the boundary of the 
organized spatial expression of the external con- 
sciousness. It is as much an essential part of the 
man as any other range or degree of his existence. 
In the process of normal, regenerative development, 
the bodily consciousness ought to be and would be 
opened into the Divine as surely and fully as that of 
any other degree. Thus it would gradually take on 
the likeness of the spiritual degrees ; would in fact 
become spiritualized and so fade from mere physical 
perception as did the body of Christ from the vision 
of his Apostles at his ascension. There would be no 
death, but translation instead. 

" But the mental state of the natural mind in our 
world is such as to preclude man's faith extending to 
the regeneration of the body. 

" The fixed idea is that the body is other than the 
man, that it is a substance entirely distinct from the 
soul or Spirit, having its own laws and forces ; that 
the soul, the man, is intended to occupy this frail, 
dissolving bodily structure, composed of matter sub- 
stance, only for a time ; and finally, the body having 
served the soul's purpose of giving it temporary lodge- 
ment, is laid aside. Such being the fixed state of the 
common thought of the race, there is no possible 
basis therein for the idea that the body can be or was 
intended to become infilled with the Divine life. 

" The faith of Christians, therefore, has thus far 
extended only to the regeneration of the soul. Faith, 
the perception of the truth and the consequent open- 



206 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

ing of the consciousness and receptiveness of the 
Divine influx, has never been extended to the body. 

" Hence, in accordance with the dictum of Christ, 
' according to your faith so be it unto you,' nothing 
else has been possible but that the body should be 
separated from the soul, that is, that the conscious- 
ness in the corporeal degree should expire in the 
catastrophe of death. Jesus alone of all the race 
conquered death. He did this simply by an under- 
standing of the truth as to the true nature of the 
body, and thus extending his faith to the body and 
Divinizing his whole man down to the lowest bodily 
senses. Thus, as he said, he was not spirit (in the 
sense they thought of spirit), but he had become 
Divine in the very flesh and bones. So, says John, 
shall it be with us. ' We shall have bodies like unto 
his glorious body/ The time will come when death 
shall cease. There will be such an understanding of 
the truth, and such a faith based on that understand- 
ing, that the lowest bodily senses will become recep- 
tive of the Divine. There will become a conscious- 
ness of oneness with the Father even in the bodily 
organization. 

"All this the Apostle Paul saw and discussed in 
that notable fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians. The 
resurrection taught by the Lord and his Apostles 
consists simply of the regeneration and salvation of 
the body. In the twentieth chapter of Revelation 
John speaks of a first and second resurrection. The 
first resurrection consists of those who have so lived 
as to be capable of perceiving the truth on this sub- 



BOOK REVIEW. 207 

ject, and thus of entering into its fruition. At a cer- 
tain stage of the race-development yet to come, all, 
not only those on the earth at that time, but all who 
shall have passed on, who have in their lives become 
sufficiently receptive of the truth, will be partakers 
of this first resurrection. But others who are in the 
mere incipient stages of the regenerative process will 
not be able to enter into the practical fruition of this 
truth till, by the further evolution of the race, they 
can, through their connection therewith, be lifted into 
this higher condition. Over the first class, says the 
record, the second death has no power. They have 
no incrustation of error clinging to them by which 
they are in any degree, even for a time, drawn into 
bondage of the dragon. They are prepared at once 
to enter in with the Bridegroom. But with others, 
while they may have the root of the matter in them, 
while they may have formed a groundwork of re- 
generation, the tree has not grown, the superstructure 
has not been built. They are saved, but as if by fire. 
They have their lamps, but no oil in them. So the 
door is shut against them. They are unable to per- 
ceive and receive the truth of a full bodily salvation. 
Hence, they are shut out and compelled to take up 
their abode for a time in the region under the domin- 
ion of the beast, where there shall be wailing and 
gnashing of teeth (the clashing of external falsities). 
Here must they abide until this external conscious- 
ness in which their error has its lodgement is destroyed, 
and thus until the accomplishment of the second 
death. The first death has been in laying aside the 



208 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



body. Now this second death consists of the further 
destruction of the plane of consciousness in which 
sensuous thoughts and loves have bound them, 
thereby preventing their advancement. 

"This second death has permanent power over them 
only in so far as their falsity and evil are of the cen- 
tral loves, and therefore vital. Those who become 
organically fixed in the form of the evil and false as 
their ruling loves are cast into the lake of fire. There 
is no escape thence, but through an entire disintegra- 
tion of their false and evil consciousness." 

I will next read a sample of the author's Scriptural 
exegesis as illustrated in his comment on the parable 
of the rich man and Lazarus : — 

" On the face of this parable, it looks as though 
the rich man was sent to hell just because he was 
rich and the poor man was carried to Abraham's 
bosom because he was poor. Such is certainly the 
surface implication of the text, and indeed it is diffi- 
cult to so interpret the language as to eliminate this 
idea. Let us see if we can get a consistent meaning 
from such literal rendering. 

"We should first inquire what is meant by the terms 
rich and poor, as used here and elsewhere by Christ. 
His teaching is that God is the all, and that man in 
himself, that is, the seeming life-in-self-man, is naught. 
Whatever life, whatever good, whatever truth are 
manifest in man are but God's life and good and truth 
in him. Each man in his spiritual individuality is in 
form potentially an expression of a Divine thought. 

" In his time and space expression, he is that form 



BOOK REVIEW. 209 

actualized as seemingly a self-generator of life, truth, 
and love. To mistake this seeming for the absolute 
truth is to appropriate God's life and truth and good 
as his own, and to build himself up into a fancied 
inherently good selfhood. This, in the sense that 
Christ used the word, is the being rich ! This was 
what the rich man did. He was good and wise in 
and of himself. He was clothed with the purple and 
fine linen of his self-righteousness and therein dis- 
ported himself luxuriously every day. He might or 
he might not have had money, houses, or lands. He 
might have had no material possessions and yet have 
been rich. Such, in fact, was just the state of many 
of the Pharisees to whom Christ was speaking. The 
poor man, on the other hand, was one who realized 
that he had no good in his personality ; he was one 
upon whom, in the Beatitudes, Christ had pronounced 
a blessing. ' Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs 
is the kingdom of Heaven.' He might or he might 
not have had property. His being rich or poor was 
simply a question as to how he regarded and used his 
possessions. Thus the rich man is a man who is so 
fixed in his selfhood as to shut out the influx of 
Divine life ; the poor man is one whose abnegation 
of all good in himself renders him receptive of the 
truth which opens out into consciousness of God. 

"The next question is, where was Abraham? The 
answer to that is, briefly, in Paradise. But where 
is that ? It is that state of blessedness in which 
all whose consciousnes has become united with the 
Divine, are resting and waiting until, in the prog- 



2IO 



THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 



ress of our race unfoldment, under the operative 
energy of the Holy Spirit flowing out from the risen 
Redeemer, the time shall arrive when they with all 
similarly constituted, whether they are living on earth 
or have passed beyond, may enter into the full and 
perfected state of salvation — a salvation of the exter- 
nal, bodily man termed by Christ and his Apostles 
the resurrection. This is the Paradise where Christ 
promised to meet the thief on the cross. It is where 
all who are fixed in the good are gathered in waiting. 
Hades is the word used here. It is the general 
receptacle of all who pass from the natural plane of 
existence. But in this sphere there are two divisions, 
viz. : Paradise and Gehenna. The one represents 
the conditions and abode of those grounded in good, 
the other the state and habitations of those steeped 
in evil. Their states are fixed. But as state in that 
sphere determines spatial conditions, there is a great 
gulf fixed between the good and the evil. But again, 
it is a spiritual law that thought makes presence. 
The fixing of the thought on another transports into 
his presence in the ratio of the thought intensity. 

"It is a universal law that indulgence is lustful 
and evil orgies bring on reaction and suffering. The 
drunkard and libertine after a debauch and as a con- 
sequence thereof suffer. So in hell where there is no 
restraint upon indulgence, there comes proportionate 
reaction, and a flaming up of the lusts as a consuming 
fire. In such a state was the rich man. In his 
suffering, his mind adverted to Lazarus, who had 
probably on earth warned him of his pride and 



BOOK REVIEW. 211 

selfishness ; and by the very intensity of his thought, 
induced by the poignancy of his suffering, his pres- 
ence is projected so that he sees Lazarus in Abra- 
ham's bosom in Paradise, and the colloquy ensues 
between them. 

" As to the nature of the suffering which the rich 
man was enduring, that is implied in what has been 
said. The correspondence of love in externals is 
heat. Intense love becomes manifest as a flame. 
Lust, or self-love, externalizes itself as a lurid flame. 
In reactionary conditions in hell, its intensity is so 
great that it is felt as burning flames. Hell-fire, 
therefore, is simply the flaming up of the lustful 
desires. 

" There remains now only one more question to be 
answered, viz. : How could the rich man have been 
in hell and yet had the good within him which is 
implied in the interest he takes in his brethren ? He 
asked that they might be warned, lest they, too, 
should come to that place. The explanation of this 
is found in the fact that what constitutes hell is only 
a false state of perception in the external. 

" The heavens of the interior man of the lost are 
merely quiescent* They are not unfolded so that 
ordinarily there is, as shown in the case of the Prodi- 
gal Son, a state of insane denial of the truth. But 
by coming through thought into rapport with the 
higher spheres, such an one may be lifted up so as to 
perceive the truth and for the time his interior man 
flow out and express itself. Such was the case with 
this man. But this perception was not permanent 



212 THE EARTHS USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

because not of his true life. Upon the lulling of his 
torments and the resumption of his inf ernalized state, 
he would laugh to scorn the thought of there being 
any other good than that of the kind he was enjoy- 
ing. 

" The answer of Abraham that if they would not 
hear Moses and the Prophets, neither would they 
hear though one rose from the dead, means, that 
Spiritual truth is perceived and received not on 
external testimony or evidence. If one is prepared 
for a truth and receptive of it, he, upon its bare 
presentation, sees it in the light of its own rationality, 
and knows it intuitively. But if not thus receptive, 
no amount of evidence can make it truth to him, and 
to accept a spiritual truth merely on the ground of 
authority, or because somebody says it is truth, is 
not in fact to receive it at all. Spiritual truth is spirit- 
ually discerned. Hence the answer of Abraham that 
they would not hear though one should rise from the 
dead." 

I will now read an extract treating of Christ's 
temptation in the wilderness : — 

" There comes a time in the history of every regen- 
erating soul when he is called to separate himself 
from all human personalities and be alone with God. 
This time came to Jesus. His Spiritual development 
had hitherto been proceeding upon the interior plane. 
Consciousness of the Divine was being established 
upon the plane of interior thought. External, bodily 
conditions, though held in subserviency to the Spirit- 
ual, had not become consciously instinct with life 



BOOK REVIEW. 213 

Divine. Jesus had therefore dwelt with his parents 
and was subject to the impress of natural social 
environments. As his biographer expresses it, ' He 
was subject to his parents.' 

" But now the stage of development has been 
reached when the work of spiritualization must ex- 
tend to the outermost range of thought. The body 
must become the conscious receptacle of the Infinite 
life. In order thereto, Jesus must retire from the 
haunts of men, must hush the clamors of sense and 
the demands of the natural life, must hold the bodily 
forces in a state of quietude and subjection, and 
listen, like Elijah at the cave of Horeb, for the still, 
small voice of God. Hence he retired into the wil- 
derness and fasted, abstaining from nourishing and 
stimulating the natural life for a period of forty days. 
[40 is a symbolic number, and here denotes a com- 
pleted state or experience.] 

" During this period, the very bodily faculties be- 
came consciously opened into the Father and imbued 
with Divine power. 

"The question now arose what to do with this 
power. He knew that it was not bestowed for his 
use in attaining any personal end, but only with ref- 
erence to his mission into the world. Just upon this 
point rested the stress of temptation that followed. 

"The natural reaction resulting from his long fast 
came and he was an hungered. The thought arose, 
' I have the power to satisfy these cravings. Why 
not use it ? I must sustain my life. The work be- 
fore me all depends on that.' Thus the devil, with 



2.14 THE EARTH S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

all the force of all evil and falsity concentrated in 
him, flowed into Christ's thought and pressed him to 
an act which would have been a looking for life to 
material sources instead of to God, and which also 
would have been to use his power for personal ends. 
But Jesus stood firm. He answered, ' Man lives not 
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God.' The succeeding tempta- 
tions to use his power for self-aggrandizement and to 
use worldly means in the accomplishment of his mis- 
sion, he repelled in the same way, viz. : by referring 
to God as the sole Life and Power." 

In his final summing up, the author says, " I have 
endeavored to show, — 

" i. That Jesus is the Saviour. 

"2. That, as such, his salvation must be as wide as 
the evils which it would save from. The remedy 
must be a complete specific for the disease. 

"3. That the body, being an essential part of the 
man, must be embraced in the salvation provided. 
Otherwise Christ is not a perfect Saviour. 

"4. Hence the doctrine of a resurrection follows 
legitimately and necessarily from the fact of physical 
death. The body must become the recipient of 
Divine life and power. The external degree no less 
than the internal degree of man must be saved from 
the result of evil, must be filled with the Divine. 

" Jesus himself was in this respect our example. 
Our bodies are to be like his. 

" But the question may be asked, Why is not the 
body saved now ? Why this long delay ? I might 



BOOK REVIEW. 21 5 

answer this question by asking another, viz. : Why 
has the salvation of the Christ been so slow in extend- 
ing to the soul degree of the mass of the race ? The 
answer for the one will serve for the other. 

"The answer, in fact, was implied in the teaching 
by the Lord that the kingdom of heaven was like 
unto leaven hid in three measures of meal until the 
whole is leavened. Thus the truth, the leaven, has 
been hid, but has been working, and will eventually 
leaven the whole. 

"We have now arrived at a point where the results 
are beginning to show themselves upon the surface. 
In the progress of race evolution, we have reached 
the point corresponding to the Baptism and the 
wilderness temptations in the life of Jesus. 

" The Divine forces hitherto working on the interior 
plane of the world soul is now to become manifest 
externally in the deliverance of the individual body 
from its weakness and maladies, and in freeing the 
body politic from its dominating infernalism. The 
present era and condition of things is thus described 
in Revelations : ' And I heard a loud voice in the 
heavens saying : Just now came the power, salvation, 
and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his 
Christ ; because hurled down was the accuser of our 
brethren, he that was accusing them in the presence 
of our God day and night. . . . On this account be 
glad, O heavens ! and ye who in them dwell. Woe 
to the earth and to the sea ; because the adversary 
went down unto you ; having great wrath, knowing 
that he has but a little season.' 



2l6 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

"The battle has descended to the earth or outermost 
plane of thought. Here the dragon takes his last 
stand. How long it will be before his complete ex- 
pulsion from the entire race-body we need not know. 
What we are most interested in is the knowledge 
that the way is now open to us as individuals for our 
having the Divine power (Michael and his angels) 
to enter in and cast out the dragon and establish his 
reign in our bodies. The light has risen upon the 
world, dispelling the falsity of matter-substance and 
life-in-self, with all their concomitant phantasms and 
evils. As Jesus said to Satan, so now we are enabled 
to say to pain, disease, and death, ' Get thee hence, 
Satan.' In the ratio in which we follow the guid- 
ance of the new light, will the body become open to 
the conscious influx of the Divine life, and the Spirit 
assert its dominion over the body, giving it health 
and transforming it into the Divine image. The 
body may now become in very truth the temple of 
God. The time will be, ere long, when the body, 
instead of growing weak and feeble with advancing 
years, will grow stronger and more beautiful. It will, 
instead of decaying, gradually unfold into the life 
and power of the Spirit. There will be no more 
death. 

" It was never designed that the body should live 
permanently in the natural state. The use of the 
natural man is to serve as a matrix for the inborning 
of the Spiritual. A certain period is of course essen- 
tial to its growth and development. Such period is 
normally man's allotted space on earth. But in our 



BOOK REVIEW, 217 

perverted race-conditions, the body being shut off 
from taking on its normal transformation in the 
reception of the Divine, as the period for such evolu- 
tion advances, instead of growing strong nothing has 
remained but for the body to sink into a state of 
decadence and death. Hence old age with its decrep- 
itude, its dimmed senses, its gray hairs, its shrunken 
limbs, its impaired mental and physical powers. All 
this is abnormal and the result of sin, and is all to be 
changed in the advance of race-evolution under the 
regenerating power of the Christ spirit." 

This will suffice for the present reading. You will 
doubtless read the book for yourselves, and now I 
will only add that the realizing faith of which the 
author speaks as the heritage of the incoming age 
must be based upon understanding. The exact status 
of the race-mind at present is the opening out into 
the spiritual rational degree. From that standpoint 
the truth must be seen. Faith can no longer rest 
on authority. Truth must be seen in the light of its 
own rationality. 

The present and approaching mentality of the race 
demands the why and how of things and will be satis- 
fied with nothing less. In order to such perception 
of the truth and practical application as the author 
here portrays, there must be a rational understanding 
of man and his relations both to God and to external 
phenomena. 

Specifically to this end we shall in our further 
investigations address our efforts. 

It may be well here to briefly forecast our future 
course of thought. 



2l8 THE EARTH'S USE IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Thus far we have been taking a sort of general 
survey of the historical and scientific or phenomenal 
aspect of the great realm of truth. We now come to 
consider its philosophy, afterwards to be followed by 
its practical application to the questions of the day. 

Of necessity, even incidentally, the Biblical records 
must constantly come up for interpretation, illustration, 
or as the foundation of our thought. As we proceed, 
broad lines will open out, showing a perfect unity 
between Bible revealments and the facts and princi- 
ples of mental and physical science, thereby furnish- 
ing to the receptive mind proof incontestable of the 
profound truth and the unique character of these 
writings. Under the new light, this marvelous book 
becomes an inexhaustible mine of spiritual wealth. 

Let me express my pleasure at having the privilege 
of spending a season with a class at once so intelli- 
gent and so interested. Under such auspices it would 
be surprising indeed if our investigations should fail 
to be very entertaining as well as profitable. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A. 



